


a casket full of victory

by liffae



Category: Naruto
Genre: Anbu Haruno Sakura, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 Bonding (Naruto), F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Haruno Sakura Needs a Hug, Haruno Sakura-centric, POV Haruno Sakura, Strong Haruno Sakura, tearing down and growing up, the slowest of burns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:34:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27214996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liffae/pseuds/liffae
Summary: It's easier to break than to mend. And so, for everything she learned to heal, Sakura learned a thousand ways to end."Namikaze Minato lives and everything changes," as told from Sakura's point of viewBecause even if you're not The Chosen Hero, you're a main character too.-crossposted from FFN
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Itachi
Comments: 50
Kudos: 223
Collections: Strong BAMF Sakura





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crossposted from fanfiction per request from an old reviewer friend. I don't know much about the Archive, so please forgive my clumsy tagging.

It’s a thunderous cough that shakes their bodies, rattling in their lungs, permeated by desperate gasps for air. The flu that her father caught while doing the tailoring for some prominent Uchiha clansman spreads to her mother within hours–maybe days–and they send a note to the school to tell her to stay at her aunt’s until it passes as a last resort. Just for a few days.

But it doesn’t pass.

The doctor tells her that it’s deadly for her parents’ weak constitutions. Weak? They’ve always been healthy, fit, and strong. But yes, their civilian, non-shinobi systems can’t handle the intrusions. The hospital captures them in pure white rooms and Sakura is allowed only glimpses through dirty glass separations of her withering parents.

Nobody tells her anything anymore, but Sakura listens anyway. What drifts to her on quiet, sanitized whispers are breaths of “too little time” and “short-staffed” and “it would take a medical miracle” - and sometimes, very rarely, a mention that “only Tsunade-sama could fix something like this,” followed by bitter, sarcastic laughs.

Tsunade, Sakura learns in the hospital, is an icon and a legend and a joke told with the utmost derision. She is exalted and at the same time she is regarded as a waste, because she was too human for the myth she became.

What flies to Sakura on silent wings drives her between the white rooms and the library, because not all hope is lost and “something like this” can still be fixed–if only, _if only_ somebody had the power; the knowledge; the skill.

But between pages and hours and the ticking clock, something gives.

It passes too quickly, as a child’s rushed storytelling, as a catnap dream–as death’s swift flight often does. There is no thunder, no herald, no sign. Sakura is sitting outside the room watching them sleep and then she is watching her father’s corpse. Her mother’s, soon afterward.

It is sunny, and her namesake is blooming into spring.

The funeral is a quiet, private affair. Her parents are cremated and stowed away in little glass cubicles bearing their names and yet none of _them_. Her aunt stumbles in smelling of alcohol, and flowers arrive from “Mikoto and Fugaku Uchiha,” which Sakura surreptitiously throws out. Sakura thanks the priest through snot and tears as her parents’ “closest friends” dissipate without a word and her aunt drags her to a house and calls it a home.

Haruno Sakura is six when death destroys her life.

* * *

On her good days, Haruno Misaki wallows in pensive misery. On those days, few and far in between, Misaki sits under burnished copper skies with Sakura and only a couple empty bottles and talks.

Haruno Misaki lives in the past, in the golden bygone days of her youth when the heavens were accessible and the future open and the world, while heavy on her shoulders, still utterly beautiful.

On those good days, she relives first her little brother’s apprenticeship to Tsuruki Yuri, the weekly visits to the pastry shop on the corner, and her first dance with _him._ But those halcyon days are tainted, and her tears and words always slur swift at first with half-remembered happiness when she speaks of Before.

On those good days, Haruno Misaki is only broken. She pets Sakura’s hair and braids it, thin hands trembling, and her eyes, so often cast to imaginary places, reflect only Sakura. In those moments, Sakura is Misaki’s best friend, and Misaki confides everything with equal measures of love and care, her words weaving stories in the sky.

In those moments, Haruno Misaki loves Sakura as much as she can still love.

And on those good days, Sakura listens.

Misaki’s parents died in a mining accident shortly after the birth of Sakura’s father. They lived in a quarry town two days’ walk from Konoha, and their grandparents looked after them for a while there. But Misaki had always been smart and independent, and her grandparents were old and tired and barely capable of supporting themselves, so she herself raised Haruno Ryuusuke like a son. When she was seventeen, she found a secretarial job in Konoha and brought seven-year-old Ryuusuke with her.

Life was good. Misaki rose up in the ranks; she was intelligent, reliable, and pretty–if not stunning. Ryuusuke finished school near the top of his class, and his nimble hands secured him a place at a small tailor shop, and later, an apprenticeship to the famous Tsuruki Yuri.

There was food on the table, a roof over their heads, and plenty of love.

Misaki never talks long about the good times. It breaks her down. It ruins her. Remembering the days when hope was a given and not something irretrievably lost crushes her more than the later, harder years. Remembering hope is what drives her on her bad days beyond the first couple glasses, beyond the point when she can stand to see Sakura or talk at all.

Those good times began to burn when Misaki fell in love.

She says _love_ like it is the name of her worst enemy; as if, should emotions live and breathe, she would murder it with her bare hands. She says it with malice and loathing in her face but in the set of her eyes and the lilt of her voice something still yearns. Hate is, after all, its neighbor, and there is no picket fence between their lawns.

 _Love_.

She was twenty-nine and he promised her the world. He was witty, creative, and incredibly handsome. He made her heart falter and her blood rush and her world revolve entirely around him. That he saw her–that he even noticed her _at all_ seemed a dream so wonderful she never wanted to wake up from it.

That he loved her was unfathomable–and yet somehow, wonderfully, _miraculously_ true.

After work, he waited at her office with handpicked flowers. He would take her places she’d never been: to see the view from the top of the Hokage mountain at sunset; the forests at the outskirts where they’d catch glimpses of ninja speeding by; upper-tier restaurants where they’d sip wine and talk and laugh until the day rose up again.

Those late nights, they would go out to clubs. Drinks and drugs and flashing lights inflated their bodies. They rose up like balloons on a chemical haze, with not a care in the world except for the pleasure of the beating of their young, living hearts thrumming like music in their very bones. He lived life on the edge, and though she’d always been _so careful_ , Misaki rushed to join him there because she couldn’t bear to be apart.

On their first year anniversary he cooked her a spectacular dinner, and his friend played the piano while they danced. He proposed on one knee with a silver heirloom ring.

When she talks about _him_ , her voice becomes softer. Her eyes seek the sky and her hands clutch at Sakura. Tremors shake her body and voice. Inside her breathe fury, longing, devastation, and a thousand more emotions without names. When she talks about _him_ , Misaki’s heart becomes a battlefield.

He wanted to wait to marry–’the right time,’ he said–but to Misaki it was already a reality. She gave herself and her whole life completely to him. She even moved Ryuuske, who was like a son to her, out to another apartment and began living with _him_ instead.

She was thirty-one and still waiting for the vows when she found out. Her office contracted with a better insurance provider, so Misaki went to the doctor for the first time in years. Secretly, she visited the gynecologist beforehand.

(Part of her golden dream had been a house with children and the two of them; a dog and maybe some goldfish and a beautiful garden outside.)

There, she found out.

Chlamydia–long enough to leave her scarred and infertile with pelvic inflammatory disease. No signs, no symptoms–no children. Liver cancer, rooted in chronic hepatitis.

Sexually transmitted diseases. Not incurable, not fatal–but discovered too late.

She had never slept around. She’d been monogamous. Faithful. It must have come from _him_. Before or after didn’t matter. The part that tore her up was that he didn’t tell her; if he’d told her, they could have been treated. She could have still had children. She could have still held on to her dreams.

The worst part (and inside it killed her that _this_ , of all the many horrible wrongs, was what hurt the most) was that he didn’t _trust_ her.

Misaki went home to confront him and found the same lazy slow golden days she’d loved: flowers and delicious food and the sweetest promises. Affection and intimacy and the connection of one heart to another. She couldn’t bear to confront him, to break it off–she couldn’t bear to break _them_.

Only it could not be the same.

She saw things now. The lithe skinniness to his body was unnatural, the paleness of his skin unhealthy. The powders and drugs ate at their money, burning it up faster than the shots he drank.

She could not bring herself to contend it, could not bring herself to even contemplate letting him go. He was the best thing that ever happened to her, she believed, except she couldn’t believe blindly anymore. Her eyes had been opened.

Misaki does not tell Sakura much about the addictions, about the withdrawals and the sores all over and the trail marks left by dirty needles. Sakura sees all these for herself, for Misaki has never been good at letting things go - only at being left behind.

Sakura only hears of his death once, when Misaki does not mourn him but rather rages at him. She was a fool, she says, and she was used, and he ruined her life so he could live his to the end happily. He was a bastard, an asshole, a multitude of cuss words, and, when those run out, horrible keening noises that describe pain far better than any human language.

Misaki loathes with the passing fervor of a summer thunderstorm, but what she ends up with are tears and grief and the desire to escape to where he is. To be with him.

 _Love_.

Misaki loves him still, and it kills her slowly.

Afterward, she says, there were more drugs and more drinks and more chemical escapes. For a while her brother came to support her - honest, faithful Ryuusuke. For over a year he held her up and the chemicals dwindled.

But thirty-three was too late for the unwilling to be born again.

And Ryuusuke had fallen in love with Miyamoto Tsuki, a stunning young thing. Miyamoto Tsuki, who looked at her crowd of suitors and saw Ryuusuke among the wealthy young heirs and dashing shinobi. Tsuki, who saw him and loved him.

A fairytale love. Misaki was equal parts proud, jealous, and hurt.

Tsuki tolerated Misaki for a while. They even liked each other for a time, the young beautiful butterfly who loved him and the jaded older sister who raised him from childhood. But after their marriage and Sakura’s birth and Misaki’s lonely relapse, she would not have the sexually diseased and chemically ruined addict near her precious daughter.

 _Love_ , Misaki sneers with derision. Out of love for Sakura, they left her behind. Out of love, they left her to rot.

Between her thirty-fourth and thirty-sixth birthdays, Misaki lost everything to love.

On the good days, her tired eyes close and she falls asleep in her chair. Her spider thin arms fold across her stomach, clutching what little warmth she can produce to her chest. Her lank and sparse hair wafts in the wind, the tracks over her arms and thighs glimmering in the dusk light.

On the bad days, there is no sleep–only chemical escape.

Sakura becomes adept at listening at the doors, carefully considering all the signs and deciding whether or not to leave for the library to return home later. She cleans up the mountains of cracked glass bottles, the blooded needles, and the smoke that clings to the walls.

On the bad days, Sakura escapes to books until the library closes, and then she wanders until she thinks it’s safe. Some days, she finds Misaki passed out.

Others, Sakura is not so lucky.

On the good days, Misaki loves her with what is left of her heart, but on the bad days, she hates her with the full force of the weight of her world. Sakura is the knife that cut her brother from her and a reminder of the love and dreams she can never have. On the good days, Misaki is merely broken, but on the bad days, she also wants to break the world.

At first it is with her hands. Open-palmed slaps, and then fists. Then her elbows and knees and feet. Weak blows, compared to Academy spar hits. Not directed. Not intentful. Not malicious. Instead, a childish fit against the world, of which Sakura happened to be a part.

More dangerous are the hits of surprising strength when Misaki struggles in a chemically-induced haze, knocking furniture over onto them.

Most hazardous are the broken pieces of glass that litter the floors when Sakura loses her balance, and she learns to shift herself to stay upright. She learns the art of never falling, always moving, and staying just out of reach.

The storms come sparsely and then more often. Sakura learns to hide and then she learns to heal, sinking her own chakra into her skin to feel around. Sometimes the nerves move in the wrong ways, and her skin changes into terrifying simulacrums of normality. The medical chakra isn’t difficult to generate, but it is finicky. It is life, and alive in its own way. It requires immovable direction and steel-boned control to guide its rampancy.

Too frightened to experiment on herself and cause permanent damage, Sakura traps insects, then birds, then small mammals. Squirrels and foxes and rabbits pass under her hand. She _feels_ with her chakra the way things are supposed to be, and then viciously disrupts it until it is all wrong.

Then she tries to fix it.

A small animal graveyard grows in her backyard–small lives she once would have shed many tears for, but now regard as necessary in exchange for her own bruises. All the while, the money dwindles and her aunt puts on face paint to hire herself out for several grams _more_ , another release–just _one more escape_. In between decent days of grieving aloud there are days of unmitigated anger at everything, at the world–and at Sakura.

Misaki is not strong enough to break the world in her grief, but there are things she can break still.

At school and on the streets she tells them she fell down the stairs, tripped into a door, dropped the dishes. Finally the rainbow under her clothes overwhelms her fear of messing up.

Sakura attacks the bruises and cuts with chakra every afternoon at the library, pouring over anatomy tomes and medical theory books to recreate jutsu she cannot access at civilian clearance. At night she tends to the chakra burns and the deformations that come from messing up. Before she learns to heal each bruise, Sakura suffers for every mistake.

She learns quickly not to mess up.

There are no guiding hand signs to help control it, no techniques or clear-cut instructions. Those are locked up for clearances higher than her own civilian designation. But there is a thorough explanation of the theory behind medical chakra, itself a subdivision of normal chakra. And there is Sakura’s iron will to survive.

She doesn’t have the confidence to leave or the bravery to _do something_ , but somewhere between the thunderous coughs and the needle trail marks Sakura learns, as thoroughly as she learns anything, the will to survive.

And then it happens.

* * *

Haruno Misaki loses strength. She doesn’t paint her face and head out at nights anymore, but rather curls in on herself and crawls around on hand and knee desperately seeking something.

One day she asks Sakura if she loves her. “I’ve been good to you haven’t I?” Misaki murmurs, gathering Sakura into her arms. “Not always, but I’ve tried. I’ve loved you, haven’t I?” And then, in a harsh, guttural cry, “You love me, don’t you Sakura! You love me too!”

In the night Misaki’s cries of pain wake Sakura. When she feels with her chakra, afraid death is coming, she finds infections along the trail of needle marks. Misaki’s liver is hanging on by a thread, and her entire body is spasming and shaking. She vomits intermittently all night, even on an empty stomach. She will not see a doctor, and refuses the hospital.

Instead, she asks for a phone.

“It’s me,” she croaks into the mouthpiece when it connects. “Yes. I want… I need more.” A desperate sob. “No, please, I don’t, but I’ll make it up to you, please. Mercy, please. I can’t…”

She sounds so broken that Sakura instinctively reaches out for her. Their eyes meet, and for a moment they are both still.

A heartbeat– _Love._

Then something distorts in Misaki’s face.

“Wait! I have… There is a girl.” She laughs, a harsh and ugly sound. “She’s ten. Pretty enough, in an exotic way. Just like Tsuki.” The vague dislike that has always tainted Misaki’s voice when she talks about Sakura’s mom sharpens. “Now. No, that’s too little. Of course she’s a virgin! Yes.”

And then with a sudden strength she hasn’t possessed in days, Misaki clutches Sakura’s hand and pulls them to their feet.

“What are you doing!” Sakura screams. It’s not a question, but a cry, for deep in her heart Sakura knows already. She struggles, trying to tear herself from Misaki’s iron-boned grasp. Somehow, in a moment, all her hold-breaking training slips her mind. In that moment there is nothing in Sakura but the panicked wish that this is all a mistake, a misunderstanding, that it will smooth over like green light over broken flesh and leave something blemishless. “No, stop!”

She feels neglected glass shards tear into her feet, breaking hours-new flesh yet again. Desperation rushes up her lungs, a mix of angry loathing and weakness and bitter old love and there is only one thing left in her mind, so Sakura does something she has never done before to a human being.

A pulse of chakra travels between their connected skin, so quickly and suddenly that Misaki loses her grip. But Sakura persists–she knows the theory, all in her head, chakra like air waves and the magnitude and the _will_ –and jumps the air in thin strands, connecting will and body through atmosphere.

 _Tear_.

Sakura knows the exact placements of the 78 organs. The 208 bones in the adult body, each fitting perfectly into the next. She knows the arteries and muscles and blood vessels–she knows them so intimately she can heal them. She knows them by book and she knows them by the proof of her own blood.

_Break._

She can break them too. And she will, if it means _this_ will all stop. Because in that moment, Sakura cares about nothing but _making it okay._

_End._

Her chakra rushes through the woman’s body, not bothering to follow the correct, insulated channels. First to the cerebrum, and though she means to let her down gently, Sakura miscalculates and the woman drops to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

Then the liver, already failing, fumbles and stops as delicate strands of chakra and will push it past its lifetime and well into its deathbed, speeding up the toxification and aging process and recycling the chemicals already polluting it.

It is different from the birds and the squirrels and the rats in the backyard. There is a fading light in Misaki’s face, a disappearing strength in her hands, and an onslaught of memories in Sakura’s mind.

It is the same and yet it is not similar at all.

Sakura rearranges the cerebrum as best as she can to what it was before, sits, and _breathes_. Her lungs shake, her throat a violent contraction of parts, and something burns behind her eyes - no, _everywhere_. Everything burns.

Sakura breathes shallowly next to the corpse.

* * *

The official diagnosis is liver failure. It’s a clear-cut case of drug addiction and overuse, the remnants of liver cancer, and basic misuse of the body.

An Uchiha genin burns her body by Katon without ceremony, and the winds take her ashes the way they could never carry her burdened body. In death, Haruno Misaki nurtures the new lives of trees, rides the swift rapids of the Naka River, and makes her way to the further reaches of the world. In death, Haruno Misaki accomplishes what she never could in life.

In death, Haruno Misaki leaves behind her a house no longer hers swallowed by debt, not a penny to her name, and the beginnings of a legend. 

* * *

Sakura arrives at the orphanage with three changes of clothes and a toothbrush. She leaves everything else behind without a goodbye: the dilapidated house, the neighbors she didn’t know, the friends she never had the time or energy to make. Perhaps, if her heart wasn’t so tired and her time so precious, she would have made friends and enemies; stored up memories and regrets; been hated and loved.

But Sakura cannot be concerned with being loved. She cares more about surviving.

And so there are no goodbyes when she reluctantly arrives at the cramped, full orphanage. The social worker is sympathetic but unbendable; the Yondaime’s administration is notoriously strict regarding minors.

However, when pushed Nakamura-san admits that ‘minor’ is a nebulous word. By law, all participants in the military are considered legal adults.

It will take Sakura another two years to graduate the Academy–two years of devoted studying to graduate with honors–only to join the ranks of traditional Genin, whether it is in the teams of three apprenticed to a lauded Jounin instructor or the rank-and-file ‘career Genin’ who receive no such high instruction.

But, Sakura thinks as she stands before the administration building of the Konoha Hospital Complex, she has other options.

Two years ago, the village rang with the celebrated homecoming of esteemed Sannin and medical prodigy Tsunade. Sakura remembers with clarity the blonde legend’s hunched form and furrowed brow and the shadows of the silent, wary ANBU passing through the midst of the cheering crowd.

It was a spectacle. The Yondaime, ever serene, met her within the gates and walked her to the Hokage Tower. A week later, the Konoha Hospital began adding more buildings to its complex and launched the lauded new medic-nin training academy, rumored to be the best program in the land, under the watchful gaze of the world’s finest doctor.

But Sakura also remembers the derisive envy in white-cloaked voices as they spoke of Tsunade, the broken miracle worker, too human to bear the crown of her own legend.

The accelerated program involves instruction from qualified medic-nin, and turns out into the force combat medic-nin of various ranks. From her calculations, Sakura believes she can pass the Genin benchmark qualification and receive her legal rights within a year.

After a six-hour wait, at four in the afternoon, a doctor sweeps into the room. “Applicant Haruno Sakura,” he calls out, and when she stands she watches him visibly scan her and lose interest.

They walk down the halls, moving out of the way of rushing nurses, and his disinterested eyes flit around them as his mouth moves robotically.

“As you are applying to transfer two weeks after the start of the semester, things will be a bit difficult for you. You are not eligible to choose dormitory rooms or select classes _if_ you are accepted,” here, a barely veiled glance of pure skepticism, “at this time, but must follow administration’s decisions.”

He pauses in front of a solid oak door. “I do feel a bit bad for you, kid. You’ve picked a bad day to come here and try to test in. I hope for your sake that you know what you’re doing, because she hates wasting her time.”

And then the door opens on Senju Tsunade.

* * *

_Pink_ , is the first thing Tsunade thinks. Pink like crayon or flowers or washed out bloody cotton shirts his breath dying in her ear failure tastes like death she turns her eyes away–

Pink.

She smiles at the girl–a _child_ really, with that bloody ridiculous hair and wide innocent green eyes that can’t have seen _failure_ the way she has–and her smile is all teeth and angles. But the girl doesn’t flinch back, not like even seasoned doctors do, and Tsunade credits her with that at least: foolish bravery.

It is, of course, not a compliment.

“So you want to be a medic-nin,” she taunts. The child stares her in the eye.

All the words rise up: the mocking questions and the sarcasm and all the bitter burnt edges of scars that haven’t faded yet. But words have never done more for Tsunade than the fading lifeblood of a man, so she cuts them off on her tongue and, with the speed that hasn’t deserted her life yet, slashes her arm with a kunai.

A faint dribble of blood _(Namikaze Minato’s cold expression and she wonders what happened to the boy with the vast heart that loved everything even as old failures well up and she freezes and Shizune is crying in the corner begging him and the blood just everywhere, the blood)_ splatters across her papers. The cut is deep but misses anything vital, and her chakra wells up around it, prepared to work when the child fails.

Because the child will fail.

Because Tsunade knows, better than anyone, how difficult success is.

Tsunade draws herself up and walks around the desk. “A fish or animal is more traditional but I find that there’s nothing like encountering a human life.” She looks at the kid’s glassy wide emerald eyes and scoffs. “Ready to run back to Mommy now? This isn’t a game, kid.”

And then pink hair shifts and a small hand rises to her arm. There is no hesitation, no preparation. The green glow of medical chakra comes without hand signals or technique, but rather pure control and exertion of will and the fine concentration of knitting vessels and reuniting muscle.

“I don’t have a mother,” the child says as the most primitive, difficult, barbaric form of healing Tsunade has ever seen somehow leaves no trace of injury on her arm.

Tsunade has seen dozens better walk through her doors with the intent to impress, those who expect special exceptions to be made for them, those who know the basic techniques and the hand signs and the medical advancements made past the meat cleaver of pure medical chakra. And yet there is a prodigious talent in the fine, steel-chained control and knowledge the child has in wielding, by all accounts, a _butcher knife_ with the precision of a _senbon needle_.

This is the healing of centuries past, before anything resembling modern day invention, and yet despite its barbarism it is complete, refined, and beautiful. It’s amazing, but Tsunade does not react. She does not look again at her arm. She does not feel it with her chakra.

“Tsk,” she tuts, instead. She allows herself that. Just one noise to encompass it all.

She continues the tests quietly, her eyes always sliding past the child’s face and her voice cool and detached. She takes notes and makes the class selections herself, quickly, efficiently.

Usually Tsunade takes great pleasure in memorizing the names and faces of the students she signs into the combat medic-nin training academy, particularly those who apply outside of the regular application times. She memorizes name and technique and calculates failures, careers, and breakdowns. She bets on their lives.

Tsunade knows better than anybody that the higher they are, the further they fall–dangerous, for a profession that deals in debts to Death. (Better to fall early than to fall like her.)

But she takes great care not to even glance at the child’s name. Not even as she loads up the child’s schedule to breaking point and files the acceptance forms, complete with her scrawled signature.

Tsunade does not want to know the name of the child. She does not want to recognize her crayon pink hue of hair. She does not want to remember the look in the child’s eyes–the expression on her baby-fat face and the twist to her lips as she looked at Tsunade’s bleeding arm. Like a mirror.

Alone in her office, Tsunade sets down her pen and rubs her eyes. “Shadows make light,” she murmurs, “as death makes life.”

Alone in her office, Tsunade remembers her kunai sinking into flesh - the first time she stole a life - and the blinking light dying - the first time she lost a life. “We are killers,” she says, “all of us.”

Alone in her office, Tsunade hopes for the child’s sake that she fails. That she falls. That she stumbles and cannot walk the path she has turned to, the path that Tsunade stands on.

(But it’s already too late.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original AN (2015):  
> Fast-paced, and, if you haven’t already caught on, Sakura-centric.  
> Single point of departure: Namikaze Minato lives; Sarutobi Hiruzen is the one who performs the ritual to seal the Kyuubi into Namikaze-Uzumaki Naruto.  
> The reign of Namikaze Minato results in things such as the survival of the Uchiha Clan and Tsunade’s reappearance, both of which will be explained in greater detail later in the story.  
> It’s basically AU from here on out!


	2. Friend or Foe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ever on we march

“Looks like his coronary artery seized up and caused a heart attack, which induced cardiac arrest.” Kurotsuji Toya frowns at the man before him. “It’s a natural, common way of death I assure you, Momose-sama.”

“What about the broken window?” The woman beside him wails in obvious distress. “It couldn’t have been a heart attack. It _couldn’t.”_

Kurotsuji sighs under his breath, but replies with polite professionalism. “It must have broken in the storm last night, Momose-san. Your husband’s death is entirely natural.”

When he finally leaves the premises Kurotsuji looks around for guards and, finding none, spits at the base of the intricately wrought gates.

“Heartless,” he growls. “They don’t even care that he died, they just want to be able to twist it into their power plays by blaming it on somebody.” He shudders and glances back at the cold, grand house. “What a shitty excuse of a life to live.”

* * *

Haruno Sakura smothers a triumphant grin as she returns to the missions desk, proof of her eighteenth successful B-rank sealed in a scroll at her hip. To be fair, civilian assassinations tend toward the easy side, particularly when the rich and powerful (as in this case) do not hire shinobi protection.

(It is not hard, Sakura muses to herself, to take a human life. People are, after all, so very fragile.)

In fact, there’s no dirt to her name. Even this mission will not trace back to her or Konoha, despite her extreme methods to fit the short time frame. They won’t suspect a thing unless they try to dig up his grave and find the beheaded corpse. Momose Takajima might have merely been a civilian of fragile constitution ( _the white room the coughs like thunder the spring comes inexorably–_ ), but assassination protocol is strict and so the head will still go to Intelligence, and a Yamanaka will still harvest it.

At age twelve and a half, Haruno Sakura is the youngest Chuunin in Konoha’s military force, though not many people know of her meteoric rise because of the unconventional path she took to achieve it. She spends most of her time in the hospital complex, either working in the hospital or attending classes at the combat medic-nin Academy, with the occasional assassination mission to supplement her income.

Though the Genin benchmark for combat medic-nin is set low, and the Chuunin benchmark not terribly difficult with intense studying, Sakura knows the special-Jounin benchmark is far yet. The medic program only extends to Chuunin; to have any kind of Jounin designation indicates generalization with specialty mastery, a requisite amount of time spent in leadership and active mission work, and integration into the combat forces. It is not something that can be obtained bytalent alone, but it is something Sakura is determined to have.

Sakura slides the scroll across the table and smiles at Iruka. “It must be Genin team mission time, eh?” Her eyes catch the arrival of the infamous Team 7, loaded with an Uchiha heir, the Hokage’s son, and Copycat Kakashi - missing a member, she notes.

“Actually, the Academy’s out right now so I’m here all the time,” Iruka laughs. “Congrats! How many B-Ranks does that make?”

“Eighteen,” Sakura replies, distracted, “Two more to go to meet A-Rank mission requirements.” For a genin team to be missing a member is strange. _Perhaps_ , her mind supplies macabrely, _the token kunoichi of the team died._

She forcibly turns her head from them and takes her pay from Iruka. It took her years to get used to walking into this room and seeing legends: flee-on-sight Yellow Flash Namikaze Minato, taijutsu master Maito Gai, Copycat Ninja Hatake Kakashi, among others with even more notoriety to their names. Myths brought to life, springing off the pages of her history texts and dated bingo books and into this mundane room of paper and ink.

It’s a sobering reminder, Sakura thinks as she checks the payment of her B-rank. To them she is as crushable as an insect. There are people in this world who can kill her as easily as she stole the life of Momose Torino.

It takes a bolt of regulatory green healing chakra to calm her shaking nerves. Sakura stows the check away and heads for the training grounds.

She will not be an easy target, nor will she go down without a fight. She will hide until she is strong enough to thrive. She will live pitifully and dishonestly and barely, but she will.

Haruno Sakura will survive.

* * *

“Sakura!”

Sakura falls under the weight of over a hundred pounds of dog. One of them opens his mouth, revealing razor-sharp teeth in a jaw that could swallow her whole and Sakura flinches-

But it’s too late, because saliva is already _everywhere_.

Despite her usually semi-obsessive need to be clean, Sakura laughs and shuts her eyes against the rough swipe of three tongues, reaching up to scratch the one pinning her to the ground behind the ears. “Hana!” She yells, though she can’t see her best friend, and as low laughter sounds around her, “Hai-chan, you’re squishing me.”

One of the Haimaru Brothers (despite knowing them for years, Sakura still can’t really tell them apart - they’re just too similar - and it’s embarrassing because she _should_ be able to tell them apart after all this time) yelps, “Are you calling us fat?” But they back off and allows Sakura to sit upright, as Hana plops down beside her in the middle of the quad.

“‘Kura, I haven’t seen you in a lifetime,” the older girl teases. “I was beginning to think you’d moved to Iwa or something.”

“I’ve been busy,” Sakura counters a bit defensively. “There’s the poison-antidote compound I’m working on making from cheap ingredients; and you know I’ve been trying to immunize myself to my Five Flowers compound, but it’s dangerous and slow going; and,” her voice drops, “there’s the chakra string technique, too.”

The dog on her left laughs. “Sakura, our deadly little girl,” he murmurs approvingly.

Hana pats him roughly on the head and turns huge, wavering puppy eyes on Sakura. “All of this _work_ and no time for little old me?”

Sakura bites her lip roughly. Despite being a little over four years older than her at 19, Hana pulls the puppy eyes better than Sakura herself. Often it seems like their ages are reversed, Hana being rambunctious and young for her age and Sakura mature and jaded for hers.

Perhaps that’s why they’re such good friends.

“Alright,” Sakura capitulates. “It _has_ been almost a week since I’ve seen you. But it’s not because of me! Weren’t you out on one of those top-secret classified ANBU missions?” She waggles her brows. Hana made ANBU a month ago and is still over the moon about it.

They pull each other up to their feet and begin walking toward the Inuzuka compound.

“Don’t tease,” Hana grunts. “Mum’s been teasing me about it all the time but you know what? I worked _hard_ to get into ANBU.”

“Is it everything you dreamed?” There’s still a lilt to her voice but when Hana whirls around to glare at her Sakura smiles benignly. It’s a genuine question.

“Everything and more! My team - ah, I can’t tell you much that isn’t classified.” Sakura sticks her tongue out and pouts. “Oh, but you know about the Chuunin Exams being held in a year, right?”

“Does anybody not know?” They leap onto the rooftops for speed, the brothers speeding like overeager puppies ahead of them. “It was such a scandal two years ago when the Hokage exchanged our hosting slot so suddenly with Kumo. The civilian businesses were so angry.”

“Well, they’re happy about it now,” a dog’s low voice murmurs from near the ground.

“It’s all good and well for the civilians but hosting a Chuunin Exam is a pain in the butt for us,” Hana sighs. “Bunch of hormonal foreign enemies who think they’re all the shit running around.”

“They can’t be that bad,” Sakura demurs politically.

Hana snorts as a response, waving off the gate guards as they enter the compound. She gestures to their left at Kiba, who is dangling a delighted young boy upside down by his ankle. “Imagine my brother multiplied by a hundred.”

“He’s entering?” At Hana’s nod of confirmation Sakura laughs, “It’s about time!”

“Most of the Genin teams have actually been held back for this,” Hana says. “Goodness knows he’s pissy about it but it makes sense. There’s too many bloodlines on his team to risk so blatantly at greedy little Kumo or, heaven forbid, Yondaime-hating Iwa–not to mention the massive amounts of animosity we’re still getting from Suna. There’s at least three way overpowered Genin teams going into this one for the home field protection and advantage, as well as the nice advantage to show off and decimate opponents in front of a paying crowd that hails from the area.”

Sakura shrugs. “If I were the Hokage, I would’ve just given them all field promotions.” In a quick motion she whirls and delivers Kiba a light open-palmed slap, interrupting his exaggerated creeping stance. A precise trickle of chakra surges through their connected skin to his pain receptors, and though her hand only lightly taps his cheek he reels back, clutching his face. Behind him, the child squeals with laughter and runs away.

“Sakura-nee!” He whines, and Sakura takes a perverse pleasure from his continued presumption that she’s older than him.

“You’re a hundred years too early to try to sneak up on me, boy,” she snaps, and, with a touch of humor, “I can smell your dog breath from across the city.”

Hana barks out a sharp gust of laughter. “Rethinking trying for Chuunin, Kiba?” She mocks, “Your skills obviously don’t match up. Maybe a shower once in a while would help.”

“Sakura-nee’s not a Chuunin!” Kiba retorts.

“Oh? Then what am I?”

“...An almost-special-Jounin?” Regretting his hesitation in the face of two superior predators, he tacks on an exaggerated, “You would be one if not for experience requirements!”

At that Hana and Sakura dissolve into laughter. Then Hana sobers and puts a hand on Kiba’s head. “You’re learning well,” she intones. “Now here’s another lesson. Get lost before we get sick of you or I’ll _make you_.”

She bares her teeth at him and turns on her heel, pulling Sakura with her.

Kiba will never admit it (he’s an alpha male damn it), but he can never decide which, between the two, is scarier: his sister’s fierce, violent snarl or Sakura’s serene, promising smile.

* * *

_Kiba first met his sister’s best friend when he was a fresh Genin, and she reminded him of Kurenai-sensei. Not the exotic coloring, as one might expect, but rather the calmness she exuded. But where Kurenai-sensei’s aura was almost matronly, Sakura’s seemed like a thin film of ice._

_Precarious. Dangerous._

_But even when he grows more comfortable and annoys her with his sister - yes, he’s well aware of his carefully cultivated irritating disposition - that ice never falters. Not even when Hana playfully (violently) induces a spar does Sakura-nee shift from her controlled precision._

_As if there were a million rules written in blood and ink around the lines of her life. As if she’d walked on eggshells for a dozen years and forgotten how to stomp. As if there is something hiding behind jade green eyes._

_(“You wouldn’t know it, looking at her, and she keeps it on the down-low,” Hana says with an overtone of pride, “But she’s quite the accomplished assassin, under that goody-two-shoes medical prodigy thing.”_

_Kiba believes it. He sees it.)_

* * *

Sakura stands in front of the door trying very hard to breathe. She has, of course, seen the Hokage before, but glimpsing a legend from across the missions room is much different from entering his office.

“Come in,” his strong voice calls, unmuffled by the aged red oak wood. She pushes, and the door offers a slow, purposeful whine.

It is, Sakura decides, disconcerting to face the regard of one of the most powerful men in the world. She drops to her knees before the face of calm, serene power and murmurs, “Hokage-sama.” She’s somewhat surprised that her voice holds out.

“Rise,” he says. Slowly, focusing on the tensing of her calves and not the steady piercing eyes of the Hokage, Sakura does so. It is, she decides, even more disconcerting to stand before the pinnacle of shinobi ideals - a man who has dealt death and life with the same hand - the summit she aspires to.

The Yondaime gives her an unreadable look, and says slowly, “As you know, Genin teams enter the Chuunin exams in Konoha in pairings of three. You have probably also heard of Team 7, which has the nontraditional format of only two genin and a jounin.”

Sakura nods in affirmation, and he continues, “The female member of Team 7 decided to pursue a civilian lifestyle and exited the force following a mislabelled A-Rank mission to Wave about two years ago. My son and the second Uchiha heir, Uchiha Sasuke, will be entering the Exams in a week. You will pose as their Genin team member.”

It is so unexpected that Sakura startles despite herself. But the Hokage’s eyes on her are heavy burdens and after a moment she swallows and manages, “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

“Granted.”

“Why is this necessary? Surely they are overqualified for the exams, and there are plenty of standalone Genin who can match up with them.” Unspoken is the question - _Why me?_

Namikaze Minato’s unwavering gaze does not change, but a sigh escapes into the room. “You are an acclaimed medic and assassin, and yet quite well hidden from fame, despite being very young. Those outside of the forces hardly know you, as your mission record shows no protection missions that reveal your identity to clients. And so, this I ask of you. Haruno Sakura, join Team 7 in this test and protect them at all costs.”

Unsaid but heard is the implication - _There will be a greater danger than their competition. Something dark this way comes._

Unsaid but understood is the meaning - Sakura is added insurance. Padding. Bubble wrap. To a legend like this, who holds cities and nations at his hypothetical mercy, Sakura is just another layer of tissue paper. In front of a man that can move the very sun, Sakura is a gauzy curtain, but one he will nevertheless arrange for his son.

_(‘What is it like for somebody to think of you like that?’ Sakura wonders, and then she doesn’t wonder at all, because some thoughts are not meant to be.)_

There is not much she can say. And yet, as Sakura stands in that office before the greatest killer that ever lived, she wonders if all that time she has spent training herself to run from death, she has run further into its arms.

“Yes, Hokage-sama.”

“Report to Jounin Hatake Kakashi at Training Ground 3 for further instruction tomorrow morning at seven.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama.”

He tosses her a mission scroll with red edges (burn after reading, she notes with a passing ghost of excitement that fades as she recalls the meaning of the color code, a rare kind of scroll), and as she leaves, Sakura wonders if all she has done will be enough to even look upon the danger reflected in the Hokage’s eyes.

* * *

“Are you busy?”

Sakura whirls, neatly avoiding knocking over any of the vials in her lab. “Kabuto-sensei!” Blushing slightly, she settles and continues more composedly, “Not really. I’m finishing up a couple things, since I have a long-term mission tomorrow morning.”

“I heard about that! Moving up in the ranks, aren’t you? An Uchiha heir and the Hokage’s son,” Kabuto teases.

“They’re Genin,” Sakura laughs exasperatedly. “The whole thing screams overprotective parents.”

An uneasy feeling creeps over her despite their easy banter, but Sakura shakes it off. The mission scroll she’d received had been uncommonly strict, outlining background and details and a long list of classified information that she wasn’t to let on to anybody other than Hatake Kakashi or the Hokage himself, apparently. The whole thing was making her jumpy.

Sakura shakes off her paranoia and turns to the last machine to begin to switch it off. That’s when the purple barrier overtakes the window and she hears the distinctive sound of her office door locking.

She turns slowly to her favorite teacher, the always kind, sometimes flattering man who has helped her so much–her only mentor, the only medic who had cared for the slight slip of a girl that Tsunade disapproved of so much she would not even deign to look upon her–and feels the weight of her world shifting around her.

* * *

“Sit, Sakura,” Kabuto gestures at her chair. He watches the stiffening of her face and her slow, deliberate relaxation as she walks over and takes a seat.

“So is there a reason for the sudden secrecy?” She throws out as an attempt on levity. It falls flat, but Kabuto chuckles indulgently anyway.

“Not particularly,” he says. “Just an opportunity I wouldn’t want anybody else to cash in on.” He watches her shoulders tense, then relax.

“Oh?” She sounds intrigued, but Kabuto has been in the game far longer than his favorite student. And his student she may be, but he is sure that however prodigious her talent appears to be, she has not surpassed her teacher.

She is wary. Her eyes shift ever-so-slightly, and her breath comes just a little faster. Her fingers rub the edges of her desk. He folds his arms across his chest and smiles.

“You see, an opportunity came to me because of you, so I wanted to see if you would be willing to be a part of it.”

Her lips tilt up, and her fingers stop. She turns her eyes away from him for the first time since the barrier went up. “Tell me more,” she says.

Kabuto smirks. The barrier is solid, they are the only chakra signatures in the room, and her guard is down. He knows he is her closest mentor. He knows Konoha–and in particular, the ever stupid Senju Tsunade–has been burying her talent. He knows, as it is his job to know everything.

Kabuto knows it is safe.

“I work for the ruler of Sound. He is, shall we say, quite _legendary_. He can give you anything you want, and everything you need–fame, money, experimental subjects.” He watches her lips part and smiles. “Anything you want. Power, training–everything.” He spreads his arms invitingly. “I know you, Sakura. You don’t want to be stuck in a hospital forever. We will give you all the training you need to become a legend, to go down in history. You won’t even have to leave Konoha.”

She is smiling at him, leaning forward. Her hands are clasped behind her back. She is nodding along to what he is saying.

“I’ve never led you wrong, Sakura,” he says. “All you have to do is trust me.”

They watch one another’s eyes, both resolving that the other is untrustworthy. Their smiles come simultaneously, mirrored lies. A weighty pause of consideration follows in the hum and buzz of the cramped office.

“Sure, Kabuto-sensei,” she says. “You’ve always done right by me. You know I trust you. But this sounds too good to be true.” His smile grows, and she laughs. “Well, I know there has to be a catch. What is it?”

“All you have to do is report to me about your new team,” he says, gently, gathering his chakra to strike. It’s a shame it’s come to this. He’s always liked Sakura: smart, obedient Sakura, who picks up everything with an ease that stirs green and pointed jealousy but follows his every word without question, enough to soften the blades and warm the frigid expanse in his chest. He’s always enjoyed Sakura: naive, young Sakura, open to his influence and suggestion, willing to search the borders of medical technique and ethical acceptability with him. Sakura is one of his own, a work of his hands.

It’s a shame it’s come to this. Only something feels wrong. Something sluggish and heavy weighs on his mind, slowing his blood.

He doesn’t think he likes Sakura so much that it’s breaking his resolve. The realization comes slowly.

She is still smiling. “Gee, Kabuto-sensei,” she chirps. “That sounds an awful lot like treason to me. Namikaze-san and Uchiha-san are both protected by clan laws, you know. And this whole Sound village thing is pretty sketchy.”

There is victory in her voice and her eyes and the tilt of her chin.

“You’ve poisoned me,” Kabuto murmurs in sudden understanding. His thoughts race. His words are too truthful; his mind is too sluggish. His chakra isn’t responding properly.

At that thought, the barrier breaks, chakra dissipating like fog.

It’s the machine, he realizes with clarity. It’s his student’s signature Five Flowers poison–except it can’t be, because the poison does not force the air out of sinking lungs and burn in his lower back.

Cycling chakra vigorously, Kabuto feels the poison dissipating. it’s too slow, however, as Sakura races toward him with a kunai out–he forms a scalpel––

The ANBU arrives in a breeze of shadow through the previously closed window. As Sakura skids to a stop, Kabuto screams, “Help!” There is panic in his eyes.

The menacing aura of the ANBU forces the image into Sakura’s mind. She is attacking her mentor, a trusted medic-nin, and there is law enforcement. She has no proof beyond her word.

Her chakra cord breaks, unraveling from its snaking path around the room, out of view. The malignant medic jutsu she was transferring (for the first time, successfully performing the technique she’s spent two years of free time figuring out–however slowly) through it dissipates quickly in the face of her favorite teacher’s unparalleled self-healing.

For just a scarce moment she allows herself a smidgen of admiration for Kabuto. The Five Flowers Blend is an A-Class poison, even at these non-toxic levels, and paired with a deteriorating jutsu transferred through natural perfect chakra control and puppet strings, it’s quite a feat to stay standing.

In the next moment she sees the light of victory dance in Kabuto’s eyes as his chakra scalpel hand slices forward with no effort to stop its slice toward her body and the shadow moves-

The ANBU slices the tanto upward after stabbing. It cleaves into Kabuto’s upper body, a perfectly vertical hole stretching abdomen to neck. There is black fire burning at the edges of the cut, fire like Sakura has never seen before. It consumes the chakra that powers his usually instantaneous regeneration before Kabuto can even begin to repair the wound; her shock reflects in his expression, as, even poisoned and under the effects of medical deterioration, Kabuto’s regenerative properties are no short of miraculous. In a smooth motion, he draws the sword from the man’s neck and swings it sideways, to perfectly detach the head, which he smoothly places on a scroll and seals away. There is little blood; the blade glides through with enough chakra-driven force to effortlessly sever the head, and the presence of what must be lightning or fire-based chakra along the blade instantly cauterizes the stump. A bloodless kill.

Sakura’s legs find the strength to fumble their way to the machine, a diffusive evaporator she’d cobbled together herself to evaporate poison at different rates, to immunize herself to her own poisons. She switches off with trembling fingers the device that saved her life only a minute prior.

“What-” she croaks, and then a hand lands on her shoulder and, in the most perfect displacement she has ever partaken in–no chakra bump at all, despite the fact that the ANBU is also transporting her–she is summarily in the Hokage’s office yet again.

* * *

Sakura feels phantom slithering all over her body, but she’s sure she is imagining it. The Yondaime explained, with kind eyes, that a tiny, chakraless frog (by the giant name of _Paedophryne dekot)_ he’d planted on her person transmitted the conversation to him, and that he’d sent the ANBU operative right away. (Straight from his office; a member of his personal guard? He is certainly good enough to be in the guard; when the Yondaime sends him to T&I with the head, he leaves with only the slightest displacement of chakra. His chakra control must be within the same order of magnitude as hers, and she is vaunted as a medic with perfect control.)

Luck, timing, and the combined foresight and overconfidence of others saved her.

There is already another summon on her–which is reassuring, in a way. But she feels its imagined presence on her, weighing her down, crawling across her skin, judging her.

The eyes of the Yondaime Hokage, watching her.

Somehow, between continual, routine B-ranks and the occasional A-rank, and the pile of corpses she’d walked, Sakura had forgotten the weight of her own mortality.

Though she is to meet her first team at eight, she sets her alarm for five. She hasn’t been slacking, but she hasn’t been pushing herself as she did the first couple of years, falling spectacularly at every turn into failure in her drive to discover strength.

“I’ve grown complacent,” she tells her mirror, after walking home on legs made weak by the day. “I’ve forgotten,” she tells her alarm. “I will remember,” she tells her pillow.

And she doesn’t think about Kabuto; doesn’t think about years under his tutelage, doesn’t think about the new discoveries and the fact that the chakra string transferal technique had been a surprise she would’ve showed him once it worked–if it hadn’t turned out to be the surprise she helped kill him with. She doesn’t think about how he was her first teacher, the first shinobi and medic to take her seriously and raise her up. She doesn’t think about how kind he could be, when he wasn’t busy being cruel.

Sakura doesn’t think about the smell of burnt flesh and the frozen dawning horror on his face because no matter how much she admired Kabuto, she never liked him, and no matter how little she liked him, she still respected him. But it came down to him and her, a life for a life, and Sakura knows the price of a life the same way she knows the gravity of death.

So there are no goodbyes, no apologies, and no remembrances. Sakura has walked with death long enough to know not to leave space for these.

(Betrayal, of course, is another monster entirely.)

Sakura imagines the spectre of death looming over her as she sleeps, friend and foe at her side, enemy and constant companion. And in those twilight moments between wakefulness and slumber she promises herself that her life cannot stay in the hands of other men. She must take it into her own. She must rely on herself alone.

Haruno Sakura must survive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original AN (2015):   
> P.S. expect Sasucakes and Naruto to be strange, because, well, AU. The Uchiha live! = non-angsty Sasuke, a.k.a. a different creature altogether, and Yondaime lives! = weird Naruto, a.k.a. well just don’t kill me they’ll be weird, okay? And hopefully still likeable.   
> The smallest frog in discovered human knowledge is smaller than an m&m -- look it up!


	3. Two Idiots and a Dog

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so young when I wrote this, and in this chapter I think it shows. But maybe it is a thought that belongs only to me, a kind of mirror-magnification-of-minor-flaws that is evident only for the reflected self.

“There’s a girl at our training ground,” Sasuke tells Naruto matter-of-factly. “And her hair is pink. It’s _pink_.”

“Wow, and the sky is blue today,” Naruto snarks back. “I really _hadn’t noticed_ , Sasuke.”

Sasuke makes a wounded animal noise, gesticulating with his hands as if the motions and the disturbance of air will make Naruto understand. “Her hair is _pink_. And she’s _at our training ground_. Make it _stop_.”

“You two are such wimps,” Kakashi decides from somewhere behind them.

“You know,” Naruto says, as if contemplating the weather, “someday an enemy is going to sneak up behind us and say something demeaning and we won’t even react. We’ll just think it’s Kakashi shitting us again and then we’ll be killed.”

Sasuke turns to Kakashi. “Sensei,” he says, “Master of a thousand jutsu! Powerful and mighty Kakashi-sensei, there’s a pink thing on our training ground can you please _make it go away_.”

There’s a sliver a truth in that statement, something not quite unsaid that is acknowledged anyway by the short silence. They might have had a rough beginning, but now they are _team_ , and the girl is not.

“I love it when you want something from me,” Kakashi replies easily instead, patting Sasuke’s hair, “It’s so good for my ego.” The patting becomes more of a noogie and he wraps an arm around both boys’ necks, pulling them in. “Okay, let’s go meet our new team member.”

* * *

Sakura arrives at the training ground at 7:55 in a full sprint and begins stretching at 7:58 after jogging it off. She stops at 8, and after checking her watch six times, begins stretching again at 8:02.

They’re late.

When the three males arrive (locked in an obviously painful embrace) at 8:26, she’s already a little worried about the upcoming month.

In a matter of moments they are seated in a loose circle.

“Time for introductions,” the oldest announces, his arms still wrapped in strangleholds around the other boys’ necks. “I’m Hatake Kakashi, your teacher. You must be Haruno Sakura. These are idiots one and two,” he raises the boys up one by one.

Her lips quirk without her approval. “Hello, Kakashi-sensei,” she says, dipping her head. “One-san, two-san.”

An indignant squawk bursts from the blonde, but he is laughing. He is utterly unlike his father, light and not serious. His regard is buoyant, where the Yondaime’s gaze felt like the footsteps of Atlas.

The Uchiha glares at her silently from under the other arm.

“Lighten up, Sasuke,” Naruto chides. “Girls don’t bite.”

“That’s what you think,” Sasuke mutters under his breath, but Sakura is constantly cycling chakra to her senses to build up her reserves and train her precision, and catches it nevertheless. She bites down a laugh.

“Don’t worry, Two-san,” she quips, smiling with all her teeth, “I’ll only bite if you do.”

His glower grows grumpier.

Kakashi retracts his arms and claps his hands as if delighted. “I can tell you three are going to get along wonderfully,” he says. “Let’s do some sparring, shall we? Idiot Two, why don’t you pair off with our newest and most lovely addition?”

Sasuke startles at the nickname and fixes Kakashi with a baleful stare when he realizes it refers to him. “I hate you,” he says tonelessly. “I hate you so much right now. My hatred for you burns brighter than the sun. My hatred for you burns brighter than my brother’s _Grand Uchiha Fireball_ technique.”

“Now, Sasuke, there’s no need to get nasty and bring your scary older brother into things.”

“Even if you have a brother complex,” Naruto chips in, instantly joining his sensei on the winning side.

“You!” Sasuke turns on him. “After this I’m going to beat you up.”

A clear, feminine voice cuts through their bickering. “After this, Two-san,” Sakura taunts, “You won’t be in any condition to threaten even a puppy.”

There’s a short pause as Kakashi and Naruto appraise her with clear appreciation. Sasuke’s face darkens even further.

“I don’t usually hit girls, but-”

“Sexist.”

His mouth hangs open at her cool interruption. Sakura shakes her head, walking forward while smothering inane laughter and taunts, “Are you planning to talk me into submission, Two-san?”

What is she doing, poking fun at the second Uchiha scion? Actually, this entire team is too terrifying in terms of pedigree and connections. Their showy and practiced camaraderie screams _there is no room for you here_ but Sakura has never really fit in anywhere (except maybe in that lab with the live cultures and chakra plates and Kabuto-sensei’s encouragement–but she can’t go there, not now, not so soon), and never did she expect this team–this mission–to be any different. Like a weed, she will squeeze into cracks and grow where she should not, because like it or not, Haruno Sakura is there. And she will stay there.

“Begin,” Kakashi calls, jumping back into the shade of a tree with Naruto, and immediately Sasuke has sent out two shuriken before a lightning-quick charge at her.

Sakura is no longer there.

His eyes flicker red, and he begins forming hand seals while scanning the foliage. He sees the flicker of chakra out of the corner of his eye– _there_ , and turns. She is rushing him at impressive speeds, which indicate that she thinks close combat is a strength of hers, but his Sharingan projects her every move and he will not even give her the chance to move in.

All in a split second that stretches into ages in the blood red of his eyes, Sasuke smirks and _exhales_. The Great Fireball roars at her and for a moment he thinks that Kakashi may have to step in to save this little girl from a living cremation.

Then the world explodes into a foul-smelling grey smoke.

In the shadow of the tree Naruto winces as he watches Sasuke begin coughing before bending over and vomiting. “What was that?” He asks his teacher, who is watching, tense and intent, as Sakura reappears with her right hand wreathed in a large sphere of what appears to be water. She drags Sasuke away from the stagnant cloud and puts him in a gentle chokehold, waving the water over his face and chest; when she draws it out, it is tainted with smoky color. She lowers him to the ground and then holds out the water to the cloud.

Even Sasuke, eyes still watering, watches with something approaching fascination as the water seems to leech the color from the smoke. The water turns grey and the smoke above rises, pure white against the sky. The pink-haired girl then pulls out a yellow-edged scroll, telling them almost absent-mindedly, “biohazard disposal,” and feeds the sphere of tainted water to it.

As she rolls it away and approaches Sasuke with green-laced palms upward facing in the field medic pose for attempting treatment, she speaks. “Fire is a wonderful weapon but can always be turned against you, especially at close range. Chakra fire, especially, can turn even mildly hazardous plants into even more dangerous instantaneous incapacitators, as the chakra acts as a catalytic component between the poison and the fire-breather’s own body.” She withdraws her hands, “You’re all clear.”

“How?” Sasuke demands, all disbelief and frustration at the slip of a girl in front of him who turned a get-to-know-you-spar into a lesson on the pitfalls of his own admittedly fallacious propensity to throw fire at everything. _(It usually works_ , some part of his mind supplies petulantly. _You can always kill it with fire._ )

She smiles, but it doesn’t soften her words. “Sasuke-san, never assume that your enemy is idle when you lose track of them. After I saw the three first hand seals that indicate a fire-type technique, I searched out a plant that would smoke well with the thought of creating a smoke screen. Oleander happened to be nearby, and while it is a little drastic–particularly considering the amplifying effects of chakra–I thought it might be a bit more impactful.” If anything, her smile grows more friendly and brilliant. “Now you’ll be more careful with your weapons and never fall for that trick again!”

Sasuke literally has no words. Naruto can feel his wordlessness from a dozen meters away. Beside him, Kakashi-sensei has begun to shake with something like suppressed laughter.

Naruto spots the exact moment the Uchiha-centered part of Sasuke’s brain kicks in again and he bristles away like a cornered animal. “How dare you come in here and act like you’re all that! I never lost track of you, you’re just… a dirty cheater! You’re not superior to me! I am an Uchiha!” Naruto parodies in falsetto (under his breath, so only Kakashi can hear and Sasuke doesn’t begin to hold another mortal grudge against him–the last one was such a pain to get rid of).

Sasuke himself says nothing, just huffily draws himself to his feet, ignoring the proffered hand.

Kakashi takes a look at his new ‘team’: Naruto, basking in sadistic schadenfreude and a bit of relief; Sasuke, humiliated and hurt and hating with all the wounded pride of the second Uchiha scion still fighting for his father’s approval; the girl, friendly and helpful with something terribly sharp underneath. Then he sighs and walks out into the clearing, dragging Naruto along by the collar.

Naruto takes another look at Sasuke’s face and experiences the miracle of a stroke of brilliance combined with unusual self-control. Not even a snicker passes his lips. Sasuke glowers at everything except the general direction of Sakura.

“You’re dismissed for today,” Kakashi announces after a short duration of truly uncomfortable silence. Sasuke turns on his heel and leaves at a clipped pace, and Naruto chases after him. Quieter, he tells the girl, “Sakura, stay for a bit.”

As if she has expected this, she retreats from her slow progression and stands at attention before him.

He smiles, all teeth and threat, though she can’t see it through his mask. “Sakura-chan, I know you’re new to the team, so let me tell you some things. I’m the teacher, so don’t try to play teacher.” He watches her stiffen at the growing threat in his friendly tone– _good_. “And watch yourself. Don’t overstep your... _capabilities_.”

They stand like that, legend against child, until she gives a deep nod that approaches a bow. “Yes, sir,” she says.

“Dismissed, soldier.”

* * *

After the loud day, the silence of her house is like a slap.

She pauses on the doorstep, caught in the regrets of the day. She’s done it now; she’s never worked with a team and it shows. They’ll never like her after today–she tried too hard to impress, to be likeable, to be of _use_. They are friends to each other, unlike Kabuto, who would have catalogued every use against the risks and found her a good investment. They are family to each other, and there is no good blood between them and her. They are _unit_ , they are _team_ , without even the cracks between one might expect of a team that has lost a member. Perhaps there never was space for another; perhaps that’s why the girl left. But they cannot force Sakura out, cannot drive her away.

There cannot be a thought in her head of Kabuto-sensei. Her mind does not form the shape of his name, of the hours under his tutelage, of new discoveries and medical passions shared and incited. Her chakra, sinking beneath skin, into tissue and bone, stealing life and purpose from the one person who had noticed her and made effort and cared. But it was all a lie–it must have been. The alternative is too horrible to bear. It was a dream, a passing nightmare, not real not real _not real._

Sakura shuts the door behind her soft like a whisper, locks out all her insecurities and fears, and ventures into the quiet familiarity of the room. She pulls forth the swathes of neatly folded sheets and arranges them, then strips down to her underwear and weapons pouches, familiar as the weight of her own skin.

The moon is a bright hole in the barren sky, burning and seeping slowly into the fabric of the night. She sits beneath the window and watches it, wondering about life and death and the purpose of all the pains in between. And in the darkness the weapons are a part of her and the blood on her hands is a part of her and the lines between her and they are bound by blood, killer and victim, doctor and patient, aunt and niece. Teacher and student. Friend, family, friend. Her life is bound up in them and driven forth by them with every pump of her heart; they are with her, just as some part of her has forever been lost to each cold remnant of a life.

And the moon swims slowly on wings of borrowed light and Sakura breathes slowly on beats of borrowed time, an endless circle of theft and survival.

As sleep overtakes her mind she thinks of the lives and deaths on her shoulders, their dreams and wishes and loves all piling up as her responsibility. And in her head she runs through everything to find the moment when the circle closed and she became trapped, to find the opening to get back out again, to make everything right again…

But it’s too late.

* * *

_When she was seven Hana watched her mother put down an Inuzuka dog. It was a beautiful creature, fierce and defiant, eyes glinting with belief and snarls echoing with righteousness and claws slashing with grief. Tsume had her lips pulled back to show clenched teeth, narrowed eyes, trembling hands._

_It was the first time she had seen her unmoveable mother cry, for the dog that had lost his mate and with her his sense of_ pack _, lost and turning on family he no longer recognized._

_The next day Hana went back to the kennels and announced her decision to pick out her partner. And with all the authority of clan heir she took all three of the Haimaru triplets and presented them to her mother, who laughed in loud barks and told her she’d better earn her right to a departure from the standard Inuzuka partner relationship._

_Because Hana saw something in the brothers and she could do something for them, for them to stay brothers and together as they always had been. Because Hana saw a lonely desperation and a ferocious desire and something great and blooming that she didn’t recognize as potential until much later._

_Until she met Haruno Sakura, cotton candy colors and dogged determination and undeniable talent all mixed together and baked to steel hardness in ten and a half years of bitter fire. Barely adolescent and in the most advanced of classes, where Tsunade-sama does not even glance her way. Prodigious in a little sphere of unacknowledged silence._

_It’s a lot of things. It’s the way Hana herself is praised for her speedy progress through the medic program, the friends that gather around a clan-backed girl with combative but amicable dogs. It’s the way Haruno Sakura draws the disregard and dislike of others around her like a blanket, blank-faced and quiet. It’s the belief in the bent of her brow and the righteousness in the rigidity of her spine and the grief in the green on her hands._

_It’s more than that, too, because Inuzuka don’t operate on pure logic. Instincts have always served them well, and Hana intuits feelings beyond words that Sakura has potential in the grime of her life. Hana knows, the way she knew the triplets were hers, that Sakura is hers as well._

_Hana has never been one for fear anyway, so one day she sits next to Sakura and talks away. And they eat together that day and the next and the next and along the way they become friends and Hana begins to realize that maybe Sakura was always waiting for somebody to come find her. That maybe though she was hiding, though Sakura thought that she desired the iron fortress of solitude, she had longed all the time for an extended hand to wage a long siege and break through. Maybe Hana wasn’t even building bridges so much as knocking persistently until the drawbridge lowered and let her in._

_And days turn into months and months to years and then they are more than friends–they are_ pack _. It is vulnerability and it is also strength like none other, and Hana knows this in her bones._

 _Because the Inuzuka know better than anyone that the Will of Fire is_ pack _._

* * *

She receives a notice to report to a white room where she sits across from a masked Yamanaka–the hair is just too distinctive–and stares in his eyes while answering questions. His hand is on her wrist, measuring her pulse and chakra flow.

 _Is she loyal to Konoha_ has she been having problems sleeping lately _is she loyal to Konoha_ has she noticed any strange fluctuations in mood _is she loyal to Konoha_ could she describe her actions in the sparring match the previous day _is she loyal to Konoha_ why did she do what she did _is she loyal to Konoha_ how has she been coping with her mentor’s death _is she loyal to Konoha_ is she loyal to Konoha–

She knows all the right answers and she also knows that it doesn’t matter a whit because her life is in the hands of the man across from her and of the woman standing in the corner and goodness knows how many other observers, each with their own measures and rates and techniques. What she says is not as relevant as what the numbers say, the movements and the languages her body speaks without her consciously knowing.

She never says what she thinks later, in her bedroom, closed away again by the dark. She never says that she doesn’t know, doesn’t know what loyalty is, doesn’t know why Konoha.

All Sakura knows is the beat in her chest and the blood in her veins.

But in the broad daylight of the next morning, going grocery shopping, meeting Hana for brunch, somehow being talked into ambushing Naruto and Sasuke’s dinner because Hana insists that nothing is funnier than watching the misery of angsty teens (and she turns out to be right, of course, in their sputtering and desperate embarrassed evasions), Sakura wonders if she knows a bit more than just that.

* * *

_Kabuto likes to talk, under the bright lab lights with his hands in the fume hood, just him and his convictions and the harmless sponge of a girl listening. Science, he says, is like numbers, and healing is like paint. Medicine is an art, a riddle with no correct answers but just some less wrong than others._

_She remembers that._

_There had been animals, before. An endless stream of them, bruised and bleeding and broken. Even in under the dirt behind the house that was no longer a home, even before they started handing them fish and then rats and cats and pigs. (Word on the street says Tonton is the first pig Shizune saved, though nobody really believes it. Among those bright-eyed medics with dewy golden dreams, hands sunk deep in the guts of animals doomed to the butcher shop, failure after failure…)_

_Perhaps it was heartless of her, but Sakura had never struggled with it. She had long resigned herself to climbing a bloody staircase. She already stood on a pedestal of nameless graves._

_But there in the white room, stains on her scrubs, the heat of the operating light, it comes back full force. She does not have to look at the window to see a little face pressed up against it. No herald, no sign. Just a sudden swift silence and a stranger’s corpse._

_It haunts her waking hours and her nights. The white, white room. Her parents, side by side. The woman’s body hitting the ground, steel iron desire and chemical waste tissue; please, one more gram._

_Sakura does not fear being in the bed, in the room, on the ground. What burns a hole in the back of her throat is not the touch of Death finally claiming her._

_No, the strength in her bones is denying the equalizer of all men. Not yet, not her, not death._

_The weakness in the dark of night is something else. What frightens Sakura is her world falling away, each one claimed, each one taken. The great horror of watching somebody else go, knowing you will be left alone._

* * *

Anyway, she must have done something right, because there are no further white-walled, blank faced directives.

And maybe they do know more than what Sakura herself knows to say.

She gets called to a windowless room, deep in a nondescript building that requires many recitations of her ID number and several chakra scans to pass through. The masked woman gives her a tattoo on her left bicep.

After she works up the courage, teeth gritted through the pain of having ink pierced and then chakra solution _seared_ into her arm and sunk into her chakra system itself, she asks, “ANBU?”

“You work for the Hokage now,” she says. There is maybe a smirk in her voice.

“Isn’t there a test? Or the mask and uniform at least?” Sakura gestures vaguely at the impressive-looking ANBU regalia.

There is definitely amusement in the woman’s voice now. “Oh, you have to _earn_ these. Not all ANBU are operatives.”

Sakura has never thought about ANBU before or considered that the shadowy ranks may not be as obvious as the animal mask and the black uniform. Sakura has never in her dreams put herself in ANBU, but it has happened all at once. And Sakura knows that she, a lowly chuunin research medic under a disgraced mentor, whose only redeeming combat quality is a penchant for perverting medical techniques into killing methods, should not think about the strange designation of ANBU operative. But Sakura has also never backed down from a challenge.

* * *

_Apologetically, Shizune shrugs._

_“Tsunade-sama has deemed you unqualified for the direct combat class,” she says. “You can try again next year, Sakura-kun.”_

_“I’ve passed all the prerequisites,” Sakura argues. “I’m one of the highest ranked in my class!”_

_“I’m sorry,” Shizune murmurs. There is a pause as Sakura stares at her, disbelieving, incredulous that Senju Tsunade’s irrational dislike of her has extended this far. “You could, ah,” Shizune offers, like some pitiful consolation, “You could always take the exam and test into your qualification?”_

_Muttering some half-hearted pleasantries, Sakura turns and goes. She will be solo-direct combat qualified, even if she has to do it herself. Even if she has to go to Kabuto for help._

* * *

For some inexplicable reason, they make a good combat team.

A large part of it probably has to do with how hard Kakashi works them. He never attempts another one-on-one sparring session after the first, instead setting up impossible team exercises and combat situations. Naruto and Sasuke agree over shared lunches that he’s gone mental after the newest addition to their team, and cast Sakura suspicious glances until she gets fed up and shoves a flier for the chuunin exams into their faces.

Maybe it’s easy, affable Naruto, darting around with sunshine in his voice. If she weren’t so jaded, if she hadn’t seen all manner of masks and lies, Sakura might really think that the son of the Hokage (who has surely watched the murderous murk of diplomacy) genuinely believes in humanity’s capacity for good. She still believes it anyway, because Naruto inspires a kind of belief despite it all.

Perhaps it is because she knows the kind of person Sasuke is–has seen him in her desperate climb by tooth and nail to a white lie of relative security, sitting behind her in class, abhorring the healing performed correctly and the test taken well and the question answered right. She also knows that while he hates her in the manner that someone not mathematically inclined might hate a particularly challenging derivation, he respects her in the way he has been taught to respect all power, in the way he wants to be respected.

The reason possibly even traces back deeper, years ago when Sakura was still on her 17th B-rank to kill a shipping magnate called Gato. Wave is a story Naruto likes to tell, and comes with its own soundtrack of “booms” and “pows.” It is so obviously well-rehearsed that Sasuke has his own part in the narrative, which he acquiesces to after significant prodding, with an embarrassed flush and eyes that refuse to meet hers.

Sakura doesn’t know how much credence to lend a story that changes with every retelling she’s heard, though some things remain constant: Kakuzu, the money-hoarding shinobi who sidles into Gato’s power vacuum; the three Konoha ANBU who appear midway through the battle, chasing the missing-nin; the five ‘hearts’ and their powers, and, of course, how Sasuke and Naruto took one down. The girl, Ami, who shivered with the client and quit the force, mentioned offhandedly without derision, but instead with condescension.

Sakura remembers reading the scant unclassified summation, tossed at her with the words, “Clean up after yourself, next time.”

Afterward, unless the mission states otherwise, Sakura has never since left an organizational structure in place with a power vacuum. An open throne, after all, invites a king, and the only acceptable kings are those placed by Konoha.

She doesn’t tell them that, but once Kakashi is there for the grand regaling, and the look he gives her when she tries to skirt around the topic is all too knowing.

* * *

It is during one of their weekly ‘team’ dinner outings that Naruto asks.

She shows up as they walk through the door, as usual. Sasuke gives her a grimace at the ambush, which Sakura doesn’t take to heart as she knows he is probably disgruntled at not knowing where she gets her information on their dinner plans. Naruto reacts loudly, as usual, still surprised by her unannounced and uninvited appearance–or acting it.

Seated in a booth, Naruto leans over the table and says, as quietly as Naruto does anything, “Sakura-chan, you’re not really a genin, are ya.” It’s not really a question.

When she holds her silence a bit longer, Sasuke snorts and adds, “We wouldn’t be genin, if not for stupid interfering families, so there’s no way you are.” Buried in there, she’s sure, is just about the highest compliment Sasuke can bear to pay her. The statement positively strains under the weight of bruised ego.

It takes a little while, as their stares grow harder and colder. But to her surprise, when the words come, they come easily.

“Genin, chuunin, jounin,” Sakura says. “They’re just words. They aren’t who you are.” She draws on tea through suddenly dry lips. “I’m just Sakura. Your teammate, Sakura.”

Something passes through Naruto’s blue eyes. Sasuke opens his mouth again, and closes it. They look at each other, and then they don’t ask her again.

* * *

Three months before the foreign genin are scheduled to arrive, Kakashi pulls her apart again after training.

After a long pause of consideration, he takes out a kunai and hands it to her. “Do you know how Konoha steel is forged?”

“It is heated,” Sakura says. “And then it is folded, and then it is shaped by a hammer until it is done.” She takes the kunai, quite used to her teacher’s strangeness by now, checks it over critically, tucks it into her bag and prepares to turn.

“Sakura-chan,” Kakashi says. “This can happen because fire is a weakness of the metal. Because applying heat makes the metal vulnerable to changes, and that makes it stronger.”

She considers him, crouched on the pole, eyes on her for once. The later afternoon light is golden on the glint of his forehead protector. The bend to his eye says he is smiling.

“I didn’t think I would, but I actually quite like you, Sakura-chan,” he continues, finally. “So I am telling you this. To forge a bond, first you must be vulnerable.”

Later, Sakura wonders why it must be her. Why, if this is her teacher’s idea, Kakashi does not communicate as such to his long-time teammates. Maybe some sliver of pride in her wonders why she must bend and reach out first. Maybe some overgrown cynicism wonders if it is all a trick. Maybe some childhood left still wonders what vulnerability is supposed to mean.

But Sakura remembers the lowest of the low, of shedding her pride and with it all embarrassment, and walking into Senju Tsunade’s room armed with nothing but the tragedy on her own back. It was a difficult lesson, one that went against her very nature of biding her time and waiting until she was sure she was right–it is a lesson she has not forgotten. Not yet.

* * *

“Your mom makes really great bentos,” Naruto manages to mumble around a mouthful of food.

There’s little downtime before the morning and afternoon sessions of training, so they have taken to bringing food on rotation to share. Even Kakashi got roped in–to eating at least. None of them were suicidal enough to try his cooking, and Kakashi was a bit of a freeloader anyway.

When Sakura seems to ignore him, Naruto decides to bring in the cavalry. “Right, Sasuke? Kakashi-sensei?” He elbows Sasuke in the ribs and laughs loudly as his friend crumbles a little and scrambles away from him. (Sasuke, it turns out, is rather ticklish and very prickly about it.)

“It’s good,” Kakashi says cheerfully. “Idiot Two-san agrees, too!”

Sasuke pulls a mullish face but decides food is the better part of valor and continues eating instead. It is all such a normal atmosphere that Sakura almost says nothing. But maybe the weekly dinners are eating at her, or maybe it’s the weight of her kunai pouch and the additional kunai in it, yet unused.

“I made it,” she blurts. And then, softer, “My mother hasn’t been around for a long time.”

“Oh,” Naruto says after a long while, after her quietly offered statement sinks in. Sasuke looks distinctly uncomfortable, slightly constipated, festering with warring pity and agitation.

The weight of their gazes, present but light, press on her and the silence around them. “My parents died when I was six,” she adds, finally, crumbling and flying in the odd space there. “And then my father’s sister. And then I became a medic, because the orphanage felt like a mistake.”

Naruto is nodding, his face twisted with sympathy. But it is Sasuke who tentatively reaches out and touches her shoulder, and Kakashi who suddenly squeezes them all together by the shoulders, an awkward pile of limbs.

Sakura, dry eyed, does not say a word. She does not lift an arm, does not dare. But she is there, and for a moment it feels as though she’s gotten through somehow. As if she’s made it from one side of the mirror to the other, from shadow to flesh and bone. As if she’s one of them now.

The next day Sasuke brings his mother’s famed onigiri and talks about his patrician father and the Grand Fireball days on the lake and his perfect older brother. He’ll never grow up in his mother’s eyes, he confesses, but he smiles a little too. He speaks a passing sentence on how he’s never been enough for his father, and never talks about wanting to be–not Itachi, not perfect, not praiseworthy, but just _enough_ –but silences can often speak louder than words. He wants to be Hokage, he says, and then corrects, he _will_ be Hokage and then he will be _something_. He will be something and his back will be wide enough to step before his clan and for once they will see him and know him.

Then Naruto comes armed with the Hokage’s awful cooking and stories of kitchen fires and his mom’s picture on the counter with bowls of ramen and sticks of incense set before it daily and the crazy strange overprotective things his dad does. There are certainly no subtle glances at her–no, the glances are altogether obvious, paired with his loud laughter and tales of the seventh nanny that just couldn’t take it anymore. He talks about late nights alone as his father works the office and etiquette dinners forced on a diplomat’s child. His ANBU babysitters, the assassination attempts, the apple lady who never quite forgave the fox demon trapped in his stomach and whose rage extended to him. He never saw her again, but he wanted to, because Naruto believes in words and he believes in people and most of all he believes in his capacity to become, one day, somebody who takes matters into his own hands and enacts his beliefs. He wants to escape the shadow of his parents, because he is a light.

Kakashi just eats and smiles. But of course, Naruto has collected stories of his awkward youth from his dad and the older shinobi he’s been around since childhood. Sasuke has a not insignificant anthology as well, with contributions from the many and various sympathetic family members who know of his team captain. And as they share Sakura’s yaki udon, she swears she sees Kakashi’s visible patch of skin slowly turn red until, as Naruto relates the Tale of the Mistaken Laundry Load and Why the Washer Was on Fire, he orders them to start running, because the afternoon training begins _now_.

But she doesn’t regret it. Not any of it. Not even in the dark of night, with Kabuto’s shadows under her bed, her muscles and her very bones aching and spent, when she falls asleep and dies every death she has ever handed out. Not even then.

* * *

“Oh, my,” Hana breathes. “What have they done to you? You’re smiling! Glowing!” She gets up close, her dogs circling inward as well, baring her teeth in the close approximation of a grin. “ _Afterglow_?”

“Hana!” Sakura snaps, heat rising to her face.

Her best friend dances away, laughing. “I’m teasing, teasing! It is around that time though,” she subsides at Sakura’s wordless snarl. “Okay, okay. Let’s eat. You’re grumpy when you’re hungry.”

Over soup noodles, Sakura talks about her team. She’s well aware that it’s much more than she usually talks, but for once there’s more exciting things happening in her life than in Hana’s, which is, by unanimous agreement from the girl and her wolves, basically all training.

“I’m surprised you told them about her,” Hana says after they lapse into a companionable silence when the food arrives. “It took you years to open up to me.”

Sakura chews her noodles slowly and thoroughly, letting the unvoiced question hang in the air. “I didn’t,” she says finally. And that’s the end of that.

Hana never lets go of a scent, but she’s always been flexible when it comes to her friends. The Inuzukas, personable and tight-knit though they are, understand the need for space.

After the broth is gone and the waiter has whisked their empty bowls away, Hana leans backward and admits, “It sounds like your training is going better than mine, at least.”

“Really?” Sakura rests her elbows on the table and cradles her chin in her hands. “I wouldn’t have guessed. You didn’t really let on, and you’ve been chipper all this time about your placement.”

“It’s not going poorly in the sense that I’m not learning anything,” Hana defends. “It’s just… demanding. I’ve always pushed myself, but I’m barely making it home most days now.”

“That can’t be healthy,” Sakura murmurs.

“No, no,” Hana denies again. “It’s perfectly structured to hit muscle groups in rotation, but that doesn’t make me any less tired. And,” she bares her teeth, “I can probably pummel you into the ground without trouble now.” Hana tilts her head back and roars with laughter, but Sakura’s mirth is soon gone and she considers her friend.

“What, it’s true.”

“Say,” Sakura begins slowly, “Do you think you can help me train? On the side.” At Hana’s skeptical look, she adds quickly and under her breath, “I’ve been thinking about going for ANBU operative.”

“What? Really?” Sakura can’t tell if the look on her friend’s face is excitement or anxiety.

“Not right now,” she hastens to explain. “Just something in the future. Maybe in a couple of years. I just can’t get it out of my head.”

“I’m sure I could–” Hana begins, and then abruptly she stops. Her eyes dart to the window beside Sakura, following something in the street. A grin, the kind of smile that really isn’t a smile, breaks out across her face. “Actually, can I get back to you on that?”

Sakura sips tea on a pleasantly full stomach and acquiesces easily, but the next moment Hana is distracted she casts an eye over the streets outside. Though Hana was not exactly discreet, she is all casual nonchalance in her glance.

But there’s nothing there.

Just the milling Sunday shopping crowd: a couple of middle-aged kunoichi haggling with an equally ferocious apple-seller, an Aburame couple peering at fighting twins with agitated swarms, a pair of Uchiha policemen, the same old trio of kids still playing ninja (never mind that they’d already graduated). Sakura catalogues it all, every important and even negligible thread of information, printing blue sky and spotted yellow apples and Dermestidae beetles into her memory to analyze later.

And then she closes the door on the scene, locking it away in her head under _later today_ , and enjoys the weekly meal with her friend.

* * *

The streets are filled with foreigners.

Even before the sun rises, when Sakura is out sweating through the training ‘suggestions’ Hana handed her with a grimace, there are foreigners in the shadows of buildings, sleepless eyes watching each other and her. The ‘suggestions’ of death fit perfectly into her schedule, provided she wakes an hour earlier to fit in two hours before showing up for Team 7. It is entirely balanced, but focuses on speed and flexibility: rigorous stretching routines that actually send well-read Sakura to the library to find some references, horrible Tabata style sprints ‘at top speed up Hokage Mtn., E. side, no chakra.’ After a bit of investigation, Sakura determines that the East is the steepest side, more vertical than horizontal. It takes conscious effort not to use chakra. There are also suggestions for improvement on the size of her chakra pool, strength exercises and tips. Even to a well-read chuunin with medical access, it is an overall veritable information mine.

Kakashi gives her a strange, unreadable look when they find her the first day, half-collapsed on the ground, massaging her muscles with green-lit hands. Sasuke and Naruto stop giving her looks after the first couple days, but each day brings the Jounin’s silent glance and assessment.

On the day before the start of the chuunin exams, he tells her matter-of-factly before the boys show up, “I’m sure he would understand if you forwent the training tomorrow. You shouldn’t take the exams lightly, Sakura.”

She catches it and catalogues it and smiles. “I’m not doing this for anybody but myself, sensei,” she says, wondering who it is he thinks she is beholden to. Even Hana has not mentioned it again after handing her the paper one Tuesday morning. She looks him in the eye, an unusually serious moment for a man who seems to always be half-joking, and says, “I have never taken this lightly.”

Perhaps he measures her for a moment, as the sounds of their teammates grows louder. Perhaps he measures and finally, just a little bit, he approves.

* * *

Dawn. They are, all hundred or so of them, gathered in a large field. Sakura, Naruto, and Sasuke are camped out within close proximity to a Iwa team toward the fringe of the clearing.

At 6:30 the teams start to get restless.

“Konoha scum, can’t even be on time,” the kunoichi of a team a couple dozen meters over complains loudly, then glances around with weapons drawn as if expecting to be attacked.

A couple minutes later an unnatural wind blows through the clearing. There’s a putrid stink in the air. Sakura hears Naruto swear and, looking up, fights back the urge to do so herself.

The examiner has arrived, and for the first time since she stood before Kabuto in a little room full of poison, Sakura feels the stirrings of deathly fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original AN (2016):  
> Kids, please don’t burn oleander at home. Or eat it.   
> My belated birthday gift to you. Today was great, college is hard, and I’m lonely. Please hit the button below and send some love my way?


	4. A Little Test Never Hurt Nobody

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was, in fact, supposed to be a lighthearted romance, but I got in the way of that. 
> 
> There are many stories about children growing up and growing stronger, but as a young girl I wanted more stories like that about people like myself. In some ways, I think we turn to fiction to lose ourselves; yet in some ways, we hope to find ourselves. 
> 
> One of many regrets I have with this story is that I still fell into the tragic backstory trope. In some ways it is an accurate portrayal of the meaning and development of resiliency—of 'grit,' as they like to talk about these days. In some ways, it is true and necessary. Extraordinary people often rise from extraordinary (and often tragic) circumstance. But as I've grown older, I've come to love the mundane hero (the one in each of us) and the everyday miracle. Maybe one day I'll write another story feed that hunger.

Senju Tsunade is not unjustified in her hatred of the world. It has, after all, cruelly snuffed out each successive light in her life, every bright flame pinched out. Tsunade long learned that everything she touches crumbles to dust; everything she tries falls apart; every work of her heart turns into a victory for the grave. The ones she loves most, the ones she tries to help most, fall one by one in her useless hands.

Tsunade knows what they say behind her back. The best medic in the world, a worker of miracles, gone off to drink and bet her fortune away like the spoiled, ungrateful brat she had been in childhood.

But what can you do, living in a world that perverts all the good you meant into bad? The techniques and skills she’d learned, failing at times when they matter most. The necklace of dreams she’d bequeathed, transforming into a token of death.

Even every victory is bitter, Pyrrhic, tainted by past losses too great to swallow.

Tsunade knows what they call her behind her back, and she also knows that they don’t understand. They don’t understand that she can never win in the fights that matter most, and so it is better not to fight at all.

Here she stands, living out a dream of yesteryear, building a medic program that the world has never seen but has always needed. But it has been a long time since Tsunade has had any use for dreams.

She turns to a medic in the contingent standing behind her.

“Make a bet with me,” Senju Tsunade says. It is more of a command than anything. Without waiting for the negative response, she waves her hand casually in the direction of the candidates— _children, really, young and still hopeful and not yet fermented with the burden of fear and death and failure she carries like a second skin—_ and says, “See the one with pink hair?”

“Yes, Tsunade-sama,” the man reluctantly replies when the stretching silence makes it clear that she requires an answer of him.

She knows what he is thinking, knows what the medics at the hospital whisper discretely about when they see the pink-haired girl. She knows they talk about how she does not look on the child, does not call on her in class, even places public bets against her progress. Shizune has even spoken up on the little twit’s behalf more than once.

“I’ll bet you 5,000 ryo that she dies in there,” she says. He startles and gives a nervous laugh, eyes slanting to the side, and she smiles a smile that is not really happy at all. “That’s a deal, then.”

“Tsunade-sama,” he protests, hands writhing, but she has already turned her back on him.

Tsunade knows how useless the works of her hands are, but she has not won a bet in many years, not since the day Namikaze Minato showed up in front of her. And she’s hoping that her luck won’t turn around now.

* * *

“Oh,” Naruto says. “Oh this is bad, guys.”

All around them, murmurs begin to erupt. The Suna team is positively bristling, one redhead leaking feral and malicious chakra that physically thickens the air. The blonde beside him snarls, both hands reaching behind her head to pull out her weapon, and her voice cuts across the low panic in the clearing.

“ _Kage-killer._ ”

As if it is a signal, more protests erupt. The three Iwa teams scan the crowd forgoing subtlety in the face of what appears to be panic, their weapons out and their chakra readying.

 _Three is far too many_ , Sakura notes in the back of her mind, _to be present from one of a bitter nation not yet recovered from the last Shinobi War._ Far too many to come from a place where the Yondaime is still the dragon to be slain in their fairytales. Far too many to come here, when Konoha sent none to the Iwa-held exams last year.

The shadow she saw in the Hokage’s eyes haunts her.

It takes her the slightest moment, and then she is scanning the arena with urgency as well. After a moment, she tugs on the still-dazzled Naruto’s elbow and the still-analyzing Sasuke’s pinky.

“His _partner_ ,” she says.

As if he can hear her, Akasuna no Sasori turns his head to look straight at them, his hat tilting back just far enough for them to see his smile.

The discontent muttering in the crowd around them does not abate; if anything, despite the patient lumbering figure at the head of the clearing, the Genin grow louder.

“ _Positively flaunting_ their unscrupulous decisions,” the foreign girl from earlier accuses. “Consorting with criminals, them and their _murderous_ Kage–”

Naruto turns at that, lightning quick, his hands rising as if to make hand seals. But before Sakura can reach out a steadying hand or Sasuke contribute a reinforcing word, the entire world shakes.

Sound flees as the ground tears itself up. The leaves fall all at once, an unnatural vision of tumbling green, leaving quivering bare branches. Winds whip through the clearing in every direction, violent and seeking in ways that winds usually aren’t, and the blue sky darkens under a film of grey. Sasori stands unmoved as, all around him, Genin fall to the floor, clutching their heads, mouths open in silent agony.

A bit of self-regulated green chakra brings back her hearing quickly, and with it a cacophony of pained moans. It is a symphony of disaster, but Sakura notes the few teams who are left seemingly untouched.

Including her own. Naruto and Sasuke, though wearing synchronized scowls, are shaking off the effects of the bomb blast as the blonde explosives master touches down in his mobile winged weapon.

“What is he doing here?” Sasuke hisses at Naruto, who lifts a shoulder as if to say that his enigmatic, loved, and hated father is as much a mystery to him as the Hokage is to anybody else.

They stew in a pocketful of silence as the majority of the other teams pull themselves together. Tension is evident in the crowd; Konoha has already revealed herself to be remarkably high-handed in this exam, starting off with a literal blast. The matter-of-fact reveal of one of Konoha’s most hated international policies must also be galling to to foreign competition, Sakura thinks, eying the famed partnership.

Naruto and Sasuke are unsubtly assessing the people around them, cataloguing the ones quickest to recover, still wearing those identical frowns.

“Do you practice that expression in the mirror together?” Sakura asks, voice low, as the other Genin begin looking around again with wary expressions. Their heads whip in tandem to offer her similarly offended expressions.

They stumble over words, but they have finally relaxed. None of the other teams in the clearing seem to pay them undue attention, as Naruto and Sasuke degenerate into shoving each other. The danger of being noticed is over in a moment, anyway, as the blonde flicks back his hair with a jerk of his head, voice pitched to carry over the low pains of the assembled children.

“ _These_ are the contestants? They’re not much to look at, are they? Can’t even take a little art.”

Sasori does the giant scorpion equivalent of an eye roll. “Art, he calls it,” he mutters, drawing an indignant noise from his partner. In a loud, clear tone, the puppet master addresses the Genin drolly. “Welcome, one and all, to the 32nd Chuunin Exams.”

“You aren’t saying it with enough enthusiasm,” Deidara, once of Iwagakure, protests, arms waving with energy that would be silly on somebody not already proven to be so _dangerous_. “You have to give it a _boom_!”

From their station at the back of the clearing, Sakura sees a sea of contestants, so staunchly arrogant only minutes before, flinch at Deidara’s punctuated emphasis.

“Cease,” Sasori says, no inflection to his tone, as his tail comes around and shoves the blonde behind him. “You all. Go into one of the four tents one by one and receive your instructions.”

They blur, Deidara’s hand still waving, and then vanish in a perfectly executed _Shunshin_.

Very slowly, the Genin proceed as directed with the quiet obedience of the conquered.

* * *

“Here are your forms,” the nondescript woman sitting behind the fold-up table says, passing out a scroll to each of them. She holds an off-white sheet of paper that has clearly been folded up before in front of her and reads off it in a slow drone.

“You will wait in the larger border delineated by green tape, which is a no-combat zone, before entering Training Ground 37, henceforth referred to as the Arena, for an indefinite period of time with whatever materials are currently on your person. The Arena is clearly marked by yellow tape around its perimeter. The Exams will continue until there are 12 contestants left, and those contestants will proceed immediately to the exhibition matches. Elimination occurs two ways: death, or leaving the Arena. You do not have to proceed as a team. Anything goes within the Arena. Any questions?” She does not pause. “Good. Sign your forms and proceed.”

Familiar with the endless consent forms used in the hospital, Sakura scans through the category headings and quickly reaches for a pen from the basket provided. About to sign, she notices the stillness in her teammates as each, apparently, peruses the form in detail.

Shrugging mentally, she redirects her attention to her paper only to stop as something catches her eye.

Someone. The woman, whose expression is not quite right. _What…?_

But at second glance, nothing stands out, so she puts pen to paper just as Naruto lets out a panicked yelp.

“Sakura, stop,” he hisses loudly. Letting her eyes slide naturally past the woman and her frozen expression, she looks seriously at her normally lighthearted teammate and the warning in his eyes and nods once. He returns to reading the paper, shaping words in his mouth, and Sakura leans forward to grab the basket, replacing the pen. As she puts it back on the table, the basket overbalances and tumbles to the floor.

Sasuke shoots her a half-annoyed look for her clumsiness, and moves to help her, but she waves him off with a hand. Ducking down beneath the table, Sakura quickly signs for three successive illusions, layering them on top of one another.

She sees Sasuke’s eyes flick to her and then back to his scroll. He has, over the months, learned his way around her maneuvering, whereas Naruto tends to catch on more after the fact.

As if he has been waiting for her to get in position, Naruto suddenly lets out a startled cry. Sasuke seems to reach his conclusions simultaneously as his eyes narrow.

“If more than one member of a team is left at the end, they will count as one person toward the total tally of 12, and will proceed as a team during the exhibition matches,” Naruto reads out loud. “Doesn’t this mean that we have a great advantage if we continue as a team, because it would be three against one in the exhibition matches?"

“No,” Sasuke disagrees after a beat, “We would just be at a _disadvantage_ if we didn’t, because proceeding alone means risking going one against three if any teams make it through. And it would always benefit teams to stick together, because there’s plenty of space for three people in 12, so whether or not they see this information, it’s still to a team’s advantage to ally with known variables.”

“Not every nation stresses teamwork like Konoha,” Naruto murmurs. “Sakura, what do you think?” He turns to her, and she directs the illusion to hold up one finger like she’s still reading.

Sasuke, eyes still sharp, looks at the woman behind the desk. “Any other hidden instructions?”

She smiles, a slow and patently false thing. “I wouldn’t know,” she claims, tone jaunty, and then her breath hitches as a wickedly sharp blade slides along her neck.

“What aren’t you telling us,” Sakura whispers in the woman’s ear, and it is not a question. Drawing out the syringe in the woman’s thigh, Sakura lays it across the seal seared into the side of her pack and activates the storage with a pattern of chakra. As she stiffens, trembling, Sakura informs her, “The antidote is sealed away by my chakra and a code, so _tell me_ , fast.”

Then the pain hits her, and words start tumbling out of her mouth, slow then faster. Naruto looks away, grimacing, at the chair where illusion Sakura is watching as if riveted by a particularly interesting play, hands folded in her lap, until Sasuke curtly dismisses the thrice-woven construct with a sharp flare of chakra.

When they are all waiting by the flap later to be released at the end of their ten minutes, the woman relaxes, boneless, as her muscles finally loosen. She has cursed Sakura to Ame and back, as the protein mix eats away the neurotoxin plaguing her nociceptors.

“You wouldn’t have died or been injured at all,” Sakura says finally, quietly, more to Naruto and Sasuke than to her. “It causes the sensation of pain, and it’s modulated so that it doesn’t leave lasting damage.”

“It was unnecessary,” Sasuke says, too soft for the woman to hear.

“This is her Jōnin exam,” Sakura says, also softly, but loud enough for the kunoichi to hear, “And Jōnin are the ones that get tortured, Sasuke.”

He presses his lips into a line but nods at this, boy from a shinobi family he is. He puts a hand on her wrist, and she knows it is his typically demonstrative way of pronouncing that they are alright. Naruto is subdued, quiet, and doesn’t talk to her or look at her, bleeding heart he is.

And she walks out at ten minutes sharp not thinking _not thinking_ about the man who made the toxin, _not thinking_ about what made her think and work so differently than the two creatures of light walking beside her, _not thinking_ about the shadows clinging to her, dried beneath her fingernails, crimson-edged shadows that would never really leave her until Death came to claim his dance.

* * *

“Kiba,” she says like a greeting and a threat all mixed in one, her hand coming down heaving on his head in the bruising knuckling Hana favors. “ _Don’t you ever shut your mouth?_ ” He whirls, mouth open in shock, likely expecting his sister as his nose cannot recognize much beyond the scentless soap that many mid-level budgets favor, and stops in his tracks at the familiar flash of pink.

“Sakura–” he begins, then winces at the current of painful green chakra funneling into his arm from the casual hand she has laid there, “– _chan_? Are you, ah,” eying Sasuke and Naruto carefully, “Team 7’s newest addition?” She tightens her grip before letting him go, and her clever best friend’s clever little brother turns to Naruto. “Dude, I haven’t seen you in something like a year!”

“Kakashi has been running us ragged,” Naruto whines good-naturedly, and settles in to banter. Crisis averted, Sakura berates herself mentally for forgetting to tie up that loose end before now and steps back to survey the motley crew before her.

Naruto is finally talking to her again, pressed by the presence of companions and the obvious desire to leave that bit of darkness behind. Sasuke is between them, like a bond of steel, uncaring or not wanting to seem to care about the others.

Kiba’s team includes a quiet and watchfully still Hyuuga with short hair. The bandages around her fingertips, Sakura notes, are the color of freshly old blood. She speaks slowly, with the careful enunciation of somebody who has had speech therapy. An Aburame shadows her, his bugs clouding in agitation. Quiet, and very likely the most dangerous of the three. Akamaru, fur trimmed down to a manageable length, leans against Kiba’s left leg in the affectionate side hug he enjoys giving his person. They rotate as if on a string, circling around one another in shifting, slow movements that leave very few openings. A strong team.

The other team had sought them out as soon as they left the tent. Team 10 is manifestly led, intellectually at least, by the Nara. But it is the Yamanaka who stalks up to Sasuke and interrogates him in a flirtatious but efficient way until it’s clear that their teams have the same amount of information. The Akimichi stands behind the Nara the entire time, innocently munching on a bag of snacks, but Sakura notes how close his hands are to sign formation. As soon as they are settled, he wanders over as if without purpose and begins talking to the Aburame, probably disclosing details, as Kiba’s team did not find all of the information.

It was clever, Sakura thinks, a clever design from the exam administrators. The traditional first test, a test of information gathering, hidden under the facade of simple consent form signing. Without her team, she might have even failed it at that. One level of information, hidden within the form itself in fine text: that any members of a team who survive to be part of the final twelve left for the exhibition matches can fight as a team and not as individuals. One more piece of information, hidden with the official herself, available through interrogation: that any teams from the same village will not have to fight one another in the exhibition matches. It is a match perfectly rigged to Konoha's values, and one that camouflages seamlessly into the traditional second test, a melee.

Sasuke shifts again, and Sakura catches the flirtatious look the flirty blonde girl is sending at him. When he is behind her, the blonde winks at her, grinning mischeviously, and she smiles uncertainly back.

“Stop using me as a human meat shield,” she tells him.

“Make it _stop_ ,” he responds petulantly, “Ino is a _menace._ ” She rolls her eyes and shoves at him until he’s between her and the blonde.

“It looks too suspicious that we’re all gathered,” she tells Naruto, who nods. Then she asks Sasuke, “Let’s start a fight?”

“Yes,” he says immediately, looking relieved.

Naruto is whispering with Shikamaru and Shino as she fixes her eyes on Kiba. He shakes his head, his left eye ticking in the way that Hana’s does when she really doesn’t want to do something, but he taps Akamaru on the head and begins to rush her, snarling just loud enough to attract the attention of the nearby teams. Sasuke and the Yamanaka engage in some kind of ridiculous tap-sparring that ends up looking more like him running away from an overly enthusiastic admirer.

Yamanaka Ino, Sakura notes, is not afraid to use anything in her arsenal, and without reservation.

She dodges his passes until Naruto breaks off, then says, loudly, “I’m tired of playing with children.” Snagging Naruto, she breaks off.

The others on her team pull Ino away from Sasuke with well-feigned or real exasperation, and she petulantly stomps away from them to grab Hyuuga Hinata for a moment.

“So, what’s the plan?” Sasuke asks, as they walk away from the people still waiting in the entrance area with the tents. None of them are considering Team 7 with any interest, and Sakura is not sure if their little misdirection was more convincing than she thought, or if the other Genin are really that unobservant.

Training Ground 37 is roughly circular, and the ‘safe zone’ marked by green tape stretches all the way around it like a bullseye. “We’re going to sweep this side and try to get one of Shino’s bugs on every person in the perimeter,” Naruto explains. “Go fast, and meet at the opposite end, where we’ll head in together. Some people will try to wait around forever to save their energy since there’s no set limit on how long you can spend in the green area before entering, but it will be worse if we leave it too long because people can prepare traps and learn the territory beforehand.”

“How do you think they’ll be able to work it all out, logistically?” Sasuke wonders out loud, but quietly, as they zoom past another gathered group that watches them, suspicious. Naruto brushes his shoulder as if he is brushing off dust, and some bugs detach themselves to hone in on the other Genin. “How could they make the exhibition matches work, if they won’t make teams from the same village fight each other?”

“They must have some plans in place,” Sakura says. “There were two levels to the information gathering there; one was just finding the information in the text before the time was up, and the other was interrogating the person provided. Since we’re meant to find these hidden rules, they must be prepared to adhere to them. Plus, it kind of gives a massive advantage to Konoha.”

“I think Kusa is the only other village with 12 teams in the Exams,” Naruto agrees. “Only the two of us could conceivably form a massive alliance of 12 teams to sweep other competitors out.”

“It could just as easily backfire,” Sasuke points out. “If there’s one or two competitors in with the team of 12, or another strong alliance, they could turn in on themselves.”

“And no other nation stresses unity like Konoha,” Naruto says, flicking off another batch of bugs.

That’s when the first gong goes off, paired with a dramatic flash of light that spans the entire airspace above Training Ground 37.

* * *

They run into the other group in a secluded stretch, by Sakura’s estimation, a little past the halfway point. All nine Genin gather near the edge of the green border, far from the yellow tape that marks Training Ground 37.

Two successive gongs go off just as they convene, after they have quickly gone around with names for Sakura’s benefit.

“That makes 29,” Sasuke says.

“What do you think they are?” Naruto asks as if clueless, though the three of them have already discussed it and agreed, on their way there.

“It’s fairly clear that each sound and light represents one competitor down,” Shino says.

“How many competitors were there?” Ino asks, and her question is clearly directed at Shikamaru.

Before the boy can lazily shake himself from his thoughts, Sakura provides, “135, but one team dropped out without signing the forms.”

Another gong rings out, and several people flinch.

“102, then,” Choji says, folding his hands over his belly and smiling as if the sound doesn’t affect him at all. His hands, however, tremble just a little.

After a moment, Shikamaru sighs and says into the quiet, “So, four-point rotating movement until we secure a good location. We’ll set up base as a two-team alliance, with three hidden. Trackers,” he waves at Kiba, Hinata, and Shino, “and eyes,” Sasuke, “are perimeter. Heavy hitters,” Naruto and Choji, “in the middle and visible.”

“Illusion cover?” Ino asks, and Shikamaru nods.

“Actually, Sakura should do the illusion,” Sasuke says. Illusions are something that Kakashi has pushed in her training to supplement her fighting style, and both Sasuke and Naruto have been repeatedly subjected to the nightmare of being teammates with a _Genjutsu_ student.

Shikamaru hesitates only briefly, but it’s obvious, and tension in the group ratchets up.

“We can both do it,” Sakura says. Half of the heads turn and give her assessing stares at that–Kiba’s team, she realizes with a start, works under a _Genjutsu_ mistress, and Ino is frowning at her. Working two illusions at the same time, particularly with different casters, requires careful control of chakra frequencies and meticulous detail that can be prohibitive. It is, however, not more difficult than using the _Mystical Palm_ in conjunction with another healer, and that was one of the first things Kabuto taught her when he took her under his wing at the age of eleven.

“I can’t do that,” Ino admits, albeit quietly.

“I can match you,” Sakura offers, and gets a couple more disbelieving stares and silence for her trouble.

Finally, Naruto says with decisive and moving authority, “Sakura can do it. And we should get going.”

They cross the yellow border in a semi-organized mess, and Sakura wonders if the hasty alliance will hold. More condemningly, she knows the others in the group are questioning as well.

* * *

The shoddy formation holds until they find a good clearing and set up camp. Sakura is, however, close enough to Shikamaru under the _Genjutsu_ cover that she hears him muttering about needing to change the formation to something easier. Sasuke clearly does not fit in to the tracker team’s coordinated movements, and it leaves brief but concerning gaps in the perimeter.

The six on the ground move with efficient chaos in securing the area, and Sakura notes how, despite a certain stiffness in interactions, they move well together. These are, she remembers with a pang, clan children. Heirs and heiresses to combat families that grew up together and built a Konoha-branded camaraderie, if not trust. Old family bonds and grudges tie them together in blood and history, both good and bad, but all known to each other.

It is like walking in to Team 7 all over again.

As they work to trap down the canopy in a dome, Ino chatters about the people, rather obviously trading tidbits for instruction in illusions.

“When Choji’s nervous, he stops eating, for a long while,” she is saying, rigging simple kunai trap, “And sometimes his hands shake like he wants to reach for his snacks. Say, what do you mean by chakra frequencies?”

“An illusion gives off a frequency based on its boundaries and contents. It’s too much trouble to analyze based on those, so what you really need to do is develop sensitivity to read it and match the output of your own illusion to a cooperative channel, but not the same exact frequency,” Sakura participates readily enough. It’s interesting enough, encountering somebody who is the polar opposite of prickly, prideful Sasuke who must be corralled into admitting that he has areas that need improvement.

She suspects that this is also just Ino’s way of making friends, in the same way that Naruto just wants to _know_ things, and Sasuke wants a history to build trust on, and Hana just wants to spend time together.

By the time they are all seated in the middle of a booby-trapped dome, Sakura has learned all sorts of tells for the people around her, Ino has extracted a promise for some hands on lessons, and is still sitting close beside her. Strangely enough, the knowledge and Ino’s physically symbolic support makes her feel more confident in the slightly closed off group.

“Akamaru and I have the scents of some forty of them,” Kiba says, “and Shino has bugs on eighty…”

“89,” Shino supplies. “But I can’t tell if they’re out or not, just the general location.”

“There’s 94 left,” Ino says. “They’re dropping like flies, which is crazy, since we haven’t even run in to any other people. D’you think they’re just psyching us out with the gongs and lights, and the signals don’t really mean anything?”

“It’s a possibility,” Sakura says, “And we shouldn’t rely too heavily on it as a countdown, since any teams count only for one person. The rate will also probably slow down soon.”

“Before everybody else sets up camp, we should try to cut down on the numbers,” Sasuke says. “We can leave a camp defense and grab people close to us and the border.”

“Shouldn’t we travel as a group?” Hinata asks, slow but clear.

“It’s a question of mobility verses the safety of numbers. Also, noncombatants could be targeted detrimentally,” Shikamaru says. “Leaving some strong defenders and less combat-heavy people in our fortified camp is probably best.” The Hyuuga heiress visibly deflates a little before perking up suddenly. Following her line of sight, Sakura sees Naruto offering her an encouraging smile.

Ino catches her eye, smiles, and mouths, _what did I tell you?_

“We can locate likely groups from here,” Kiba says. “Who’s on the strike team?”

“For now,” Shikamaru says, “Let’s have the combat team go along with two extra support to weigh the numbers on our side. Team 7 should be used to working with each other, but we’ll rotate up the strike members as necessary, after we’re all used to cooperating.”

“Okay,” Ino says. “I guess you’re going with them, then.” Shikamaru looks at her with a furrow in his brow, and she says, “Great, that’s settled.” Turning to Hinata and Shino, side by side, she orders with all the imperiousness of a girl that has browbeat her team into obedience, “Find us some prey.”

* * *

After Shino does a triangulation technique with his bugs, Hinata comes with them to the edge of the traps and confirms the presence of three people at the edge of her vision, and they are off.

Shikamaru explains his capabilities, which seem to center most around analyzing well and waiting for an opportunity. Though she acted like a brat about it, it seemed that Ino didn’t choose meaninglessly, as Shikamaru is the kind of person to attack thoughtfully after waiting in the wings, and a good backup plan.

Not, as it turns out, that they need a backup plan.

Sasuke blindsides the unsuspecting team with a fireball, and before the others can even react, Sakura has taken one down with a glowing green hand.

When she turns around, Sasuke has one trussed up in wire, and Naruto is sitting on top of the unconscious kunoichi of the team. “Konoha Genin,” Naruto says, “And practically fresh out of the academy.”

“I’m ashamed to be the same rank as them,” Sasuke mutters with undiminished petulance in his old argument. Despite the fact that both he and Naruto agree that the last two exams were in prohibitively disadvantageous locations, and field promotions are uncommon in peacetime and not as economically beneficial as Exam winners, they are still annoyed by being practically held back in Geninhood by their families.

“Let’s toss them out,” Sakura says, putting a hand to the one tangled up in wire and knocking him out. “They’re not ready to fight any exhibition matches, anyway.”

“Well, of course we’re going to toss them,” Naruto says. “There’s, what, fifty Konoha teams in this Exam? And most of the weakest, to boot. The ones that come here from other nations at least have to be strong enough to pass muster to travel internationally.”

At the edge, they unceremoniously dump all three past the yellow line. As they leave, a masked shadow drops down and _Shunshins_ all three out.

* * *

She looks up at the stars, still cataloguing every whisper in the night around her, and breathes. Two days in, 84 gongs. Sakura watches until the Kitora angle winds down to a straight line, as the clock written in the stars draws to a close the second day, and then whispers to herself too quietly even for her own ears to hear.

“Happy sixteenth.”

In the darkness around her are her parents, hands on her shoulders, singing. Her dad, with the used up matches that he wasted trying to light the candles until mom finally took over, because he was never good with holding danger so close. Presents wrapped in colored cellophane, and a child wrapped in her parents’ love.

And– _no._

And Misaki, four years of home-made cakes in the outdated oven that didn’t always work as well as an oven ought to work. Her aunt, her family, with nothing to her name but the little she could scrounge up, holding out a box covered in yesterday’s newspaper. The whole stick of butter for the cake, come out of the next day’s powders. Gifts made noble by the little they came from, but given all weight by what love and concern remained.

And, and–

 _Stop_.

-and the silver-haired shadow, light glinting off glasses, who in the dark she cannot keep away. No candles, but a prized scroll and a human cadaver for lucky number twelve.

She glanced at the calendar, where her birthday lies unmarked, just to see him twitch.

“You just made Chuunin,” he said, “So a little celebration is overdue.”

Neither of them mentioned that it was the anniversary of something else, but she keeps the scroll still, tucked away with the ghosts under her bed, monsters no more frightening than the one sleeping in the sheets on top. She keeps the scroll still, and the things she learned from the cadaver, and her chakra in Misaki’s veins, and the white, white room where she waits and watches helplessly.

Haruno Sakura keeps all of these things, but she looks up at the sixteen sky and tells it, silently:

_I’m not helpless anymore._

* * *

The Ame duo finally goes down, though Shikamaru steps in after a while to give Sakura an opening, freezing one of the girls and allowing for a clean green swipe to the temple. The other falls without trouble, their synchronized mixed water-ice techniques no longer a threat.

“Sasuke,” Naruto pants, “Did you never learn the first lesson Sakura taught you?”

Shikamaru looks on in mild interest as Sasuke sputters and turns red, and Sakura ties up both Genin and puts them on her back. Team 7 has been working with a rotating side of Shikamaru, Kiba, and Shino, though she rather prefers Shikamaru for his quiet observations and occasional dry wit. Kiba is far too awkwardly familiar, and Shino rather distant.

She lets Naruto talk Sasuke around to the mistakes he made in barging in and alerting the enemy duo to their presence near a _river_ , of all things. Unsaid is the fact that caution is more necessary now than ever, as the remaining opponents are stronger than the early pickings.

It’s about noon, and they are rushing back to camp for lunch, which was already in the making as they left to snatch the two who wandered too close. But as they make their way back from the border, she stops them all at the edge of the traps.

“Something’s wrong,” she says, quiet in the undisturbed air. “The illusion traps I set are gone.”

With a just look, they spread out at high speed, centering in on base, Shikamaru on their heels. They are within the sound barrier, nearly to camp, when a hoarse scream rends the air. Winds stir up, and they halt as one in the foliage as little grains leave small but painful cuts on exposed skin.

“Sand,” Sakura whispers to herself, and launches herself forward, cold adrenaline in her veins, for before them looms a lumbering monster, blocking out the sun.

Two gongs ring, rare now by the fourth day, and the accompanying flashes illuminate a craggy closed eyelid, and adrenaline turns to fear.

Shy, soft-spoken Hinata, who took an age to warm up but, after getting past her barrier, speaks eloquently and with refinement on just about anything. Choji, always there with a kind word and a joke in good taste, willing to share his seemingly unending stash of snacks, offering friendship on the turn of a coin. Shino, smart and hesitant about sharing it, but practically loquacious when it came to the topic of his bugs, who are to him family and friends both. Ino, who reaches out most easily of all, uses everything in her power, reserves nothing for embarrassment or fear, and chases persistently what she sets her mind on, even if it’s the tentative friendship of an unknown pink-haired outsider. Kiba, practically a little brother, her best friend’s little kid shadow.

It can’t. It can’t be any of them.

It _can’t._

As Shukaku the One-Tailed opens his black-veined yellow eyes, Sakura knows in the swell of her blood that this is only the beginning of the precipice in the Hokage’s eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original AN (2016):   
> -So nobody guessed the examiner, at least in the reviews. (I didn’t expect anybody to; if you did, I’d have to wonder if you’ve hacked my computer and gotten into my notes.)   
> -Similar to the bell test, the Chuunin Exam needs to die a thousand deaths more than it needs to be rewritten… again.   
> -Fun fact: this was originally supposed to be a rom com. And then I started writing it.   
> -Some ancient Japanese constellation references were found in the Kitora Tomb, and I named the stars Sakura uses to tell time after the tomb.
> 
> The Timeline So Far, by Sakura’s age and events:   
> 6: Death of parents | 10: Death of aunt Misaki | 12: Chuunin | 15: Joined Team 7


	5. Team

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reading a piece of old writing is like sitting down with the self from years prior. I thought I hadn't changed, but I have.

_A roar echoes in the silent forest. The dirt itself seems to come alive, grains of rock turning like sunflowers toward the sun. A violent burst of chakra blooms and makes the air heavy with potential; in the distance, a shadow rises formed like man from the dust, with breath of not life but death inhabiting its bones._

_Quick, they slide through the trees above unknowing and unsuspecting combatants. Enemy children point and chatter beneath them curiously, unaware of certain death passing over their heads—but they are fortunate. The team has no thoughts to spare for the weedlings._

_His hand finds his sword. His chakra flexes in his veins, eager, ready. He recalls: his brother’s smile the morning before, full of unapologetic arrogance, ignorant of the danger he walked toward so willingly. Fifteen, and just old enough to be eagerly spreading his own wings, yet young enough to be mistakenly convinced of his own invincibility._

_He is not worried._

Two minutes, _Sparrow signals from the leading point position, veins bulging under his mask._

_Two minutes._

* * *

Hearing the far-off roar, Kankuro flinches in his seat. His hand jerks, adding a sharp peak to the middle of his signature.

“Temari,” he says, his voice hushed so that the chuunin outside the door will not hear him. “Sister, it’s gone wrong. How did it go wrong? Why is this happening?” He can hear his voice rise and break with the weight of held-back tears. “We shouldn’t have left. We should have—we should have found a way. To control him. No, this shouldn’t have happened. Why—

“Shut your damn mouth,” she snaps back in a hiss, for the third time since they left the boundaries of the forest to the sound of two gongs. A Konoha nin had met them at the boundary armed with a considering gaze; four days in, few of the remaining competitors are willingly surrendering by leaving the arena.

She is sure they are watching them, and that is just one worry to add to a lengthy anthology.

“Temari, what are we going to do?” His heart is in his throat, along with the nutrient bar he had for lunch. It is beating, pumping in his neck, threatening to jump out.

Everything is wrong.

“Shut up!” Temari lashes out, and Kankuro hears the same desperation that lives in him echoing in his sister’s voice. His calm, collected older sister, who always had a plan to steal the cake from the kitchen, to rope the other kids into obeying, to handle their dad—his sister is trembling before him, elbows knocking into the table, breath unsteady and heavy.

“Is there a problem in here?” The chuunin asks from the doorway.

“No,” Temari says, her voice flat. “There are no problems. I’m done with these forms.”

Kankuro has never been able to catch his sister in a lie, but he knows she is lying now.

* * *

Devastation.

Sakura sees the scene in fragments, swelling to the beat of her blood and the pound of her feet. Hinata, veins bulging, hands directing a slowly flickering chakra shield over Choji, who is carrying an unconscious Shino on his back. Shino’s face is tinged green, and his body is wracked with slight tremors—chakra exhaustion, and quite severe, Sakura notes with a rush of relief. Relief, because it is not fatal.

Ino, beautifully vivacious Ino, is lying too still on the ground, blood dripping from the side of her mouth, face slack. Another footstep, her breath catching, Sakura hopes hopes _hopes_ that it is Yamanaka backlash. Kiba, in front of his teammate, desperate chakra-driven whirling into a claw.

And every blink interlaced with the pain of sand, every scene pointing to the monster. Naruto’s voice floats over on the wind, almost reverent, almost despairing:

“Shukaku.”

The One-Tailed Beast.

Over the rush of the wind in her ears, Sakura hears his high-pitched, maniacal laughter. While batting unconcernedly at Kiba, he looks over at them and smiles. It is all teeth and not one iota of comfort.

“Plan,” Sakura demands in a harsh escape of air.

For once, it is not Shikamaru who answers. He has caught up, his footsteps veering toward his team members. His mouth is a drawn stress line, his eyebrows furrowed. He looks young, old, and lost.

“Target the jinchuuriki,” Naruto says into the silence, voice pitched low, something like commiseration shadowing his words.

Sasuke’s response is quick, as if he has expected this direction of thought. “Who,” he asks.

“Suna, male,” Naruto responds, “Redheaded and tattooed on his forehead. He’ll be,” he pauses and grimaces, “In the body somewhere, probably.” His eyes dart toward Sakura.

It is not unknown among the shinobi populace that the Yondaime’s son is the jinchuuriki of the Nine-Tailed Fox. Despite some lingering judgment and apprehension, nobody speaks of it, not even in private where the walls should not have ears. The Yondaime made his stance on the laws concerning the jinchuuriki exceedingly clear with the first and only vocal dissenters. If there are any more people who would like nothing better than to stone Uzumaki Naruto, they are at least smart enough not to voice those opinions.

Sakura does not acknowledge Naruto’s slight discomfort.

“Pincer and illusion approach,” she signs with a whistle instead, and both her teammates acknowledge. “Go to your team, Shikamaru,” she says.

He doesn’t look at her as he splits off from them, speeding toward Akamaru. They both know that his chakra reserves are not sufficient to restrain something of this size.

Their conversation has taken a matter of seconds, and it is only seconds more before they are close enough that the very density of sand in the air has thickened to the point where chakra must be used for every step. Hands held behind her in subtle half-signs for concentration, Sakura weaves the layers of an area-effect genjutsu showing herself breaking off to tend to Ino.

It is where she would like to be, but there are other tasks at hand.

Approaching angled from two sides, Naruto and Sasuke bring out their kill shots. Naruto, right hand wreathed in a perfect blue Rasengan; Sasuke, a spear of white-blue fire crackling in his left hand.

Shukaku is still laughing, his eyes rolling skyward. His voice, booming out over the entire arena, sounds strangely hollow and crazed. “ _Ore-sama_ will deign to play with you!”

Faster than either of her teammates and hidden under a perfectly woven layer of illusory chakra, Sakura launches off a tree and lands with chakra-padded softness against the side of the One-Tailed’s torso. She heads immediately toward the concentration of chakra near his head with the speed honed by sprints up the side of a mountain and tuned by the addition of chakra.

She feels a shift in the sands beneath her, the roar of released chakra, and a horrifying crack; a glance that she cannot afford to spare reveals Naruto disappearing into a ball of pure attack chakra and Sasuke pinned by talon and claw to a tree trunk. Shukaku’s laughter is ever echoing in her ears, and _protect them at all costs_ protect, protect, the Hokage’s words. She is a layer of gauze, but enough—A burst of chakra powers her even faster, faster than she’s ever gone, sprinting up the mountain that is Shukaku’s body, homing in toward the mass of chakra within that must be the jinchuuriki.

Shukaku’s laughter pauses, a surprised and pleased tone breaking out of him as he turns his attention inwards. “Trying to trick _Ore-sama_?” He sounds amused and not at all concerned, laughter rising again.

A giant paw reaches up toward her—Sakura forms the wonderful terrible green chakra in her hand as she reaches the half-buried boy—the ground beneath her rumbles in laughter. There is fire branded in her back, sands of grain writhing beneath her skin, digging furrows and trenches into fabric and muscle.

A thick layer of sand forms beneath her fingertips and Shukaku howls in laughter and the words _Ore-sama’s perfect defense_ don’t quite register in her mind as her brows knit. The chakra travels through the barrier, weakened but not entirely gone, and the redheaded boy opens his eyes, blood trickling from his orifices. He coughs once, twice, and then collapses forward. A defense indeed, to turn her touch-transmitted _Zangbao_ into this.

Sakura feels her lips tilt up as the world collapses around her to the music of Shukaku’s shrieks and falling sand.

* * *

_Naruto explained the Rasengan to Sakura one Monday afternoon, and it is an encounter he might never forget._

_The sky is steel grey, forged with blue; there is the acrid taste of rain on every breath. Sakura is bent over Sasuke’s hand, green light running over the searing burn from a fire held too close, too long._

_He has outlined the concept many times before to Sasuke, who has a long-suffering expression on his face as he gesticulates while trying to put into words the “swirling fast chakra in circles in different directions so they hold each other together kinda like when a wind gets stuck between two buildings and swirls a bunch of leaves—no wait, that’s not right…”_

_Finally, he holds out his hand, contorting his face in concentration. The Rasengan forms, a perfect blue sphere that, as always, reminds Naruto of his father’s eyes when he is looking straight at him (not at anybody else, not at the guards or the other shinobi or his mom’s pictures on the mantle, but just at him). He smiles into it, controlled chaos on his palm, and turns to Sakura. “See?”_

_She, half-smiling, puts down Sasuke’s healed hand. “It sounds like some of the chakra control exercises, to be honest.”_

_“It’s way cooler that_ those _,” Naruto protests, grimacing. Chakra control exercises are not awesome. Chakra control exercises long afternoons smelling the distinct aroma of chakra-burnt leaves as leaf after leaf burns off from his forehead in flames. Rasengan is his father’s smile when he finally forms it in his hand._

_When he shakes himself from his thoughts, he sees his favorite expression on Sasuke—that kind of fishlike gaping astonishment he has, occasionally, when somebody breaks his rigid glass ceilings of possibility. And, more improbably, he sees Sakura, frowning at a faint bluish ball in her hand. It wavers and then solidifies. And then she holds the pint-sized Rasengan in her hand to the ground, driving it in._

_Naruto thought he was accustomed enough to the impossible being done, and he was wrong._

_Her hand comes back up a normal Sakura hand (as normal as such a hand can be when Naruto has seen her touch people and heal them or knock them out), but Naruto can’t stop staring at it. It is small, and slightly calloused, and remarkably deceptive._

_“No,” he breathes. And then, trying to restore equilibrium and not put on a fish face himself, he takes a stab at humor. “Sakura! I can’t tell you about my super special secret moves if you do stuff like that.”_

_She is panting lightly, her hand slightly trembling, her face a little pale. “Don’t worry, Naruto,” she says. “I would probably keel over if I tried to use that in a fight. That is an insane amount of chakra.”_

_It’s true that Sakura’s version of the Rasengan is small, and a little too faint, and takes a lot out of her. But there is also something ridiculously prodigious in her control and direction of the chakra in her hand in a form that took Naruto the tutelage of his father and several long weeks to learn._

_They make a mess out of the clearing that day, leaving a trail of pockmarks in the ground. Sasuke shows them Lanxing, the blue ball of delayed explosive fire that his brother showed him. Sakura shows them a technique that looks like a string of chakra and transfers medical jutsu across a distance. She “picked it up from a mentor in the hospital,” and if it were not for the flash of lonely distance in her eyes, Naruto definitely would have gotten to the bottom of that vague statement._

_As they wreak havoc, he keeps coming back to Sakura, with the baby Rasengan in her hand. Sakura who, despite her hard shell and penchant for keeping herself a mystery, is water at heart—fluid, accepting, wanting. Always trying so hard._

_He keeps wondering what his teammate would be like if she had somebody—somebody who would do things like teach her a Rasengan or Lanxing—somebody to rely on, somebody to belong to. How much more formidable would she be? How much more improbable and exceptional would she be?_

_But then again, he thinks, watching her manipulate her barely visible chakra strings, maybe it was the very lack of this that made her into who she is._

_Maybe Sakura is not the vine that grows best with a tree, but the tree that finds strength in weathering the storm._

_Or, perhaps, he thinks, watching Sasuke laugh while trying to talk her through manipulating explosive chakra down that chakra string, perhaps even trees need a grove to call home. Maybe she is with them now, part of Team 7, and stronger for it._

* * *

Most severe is Naruto, with third-degree chakra burns every inch of exposed skin. He waves Sakura’s hand off as, before her eyes, his skin knits back up together in bursts of reddish-purple chakra. He doesn’t meet her eyes, but if he had, he would have seen nothing but detached interest and perhaps a bit of unwanted pain.

Sakura has seen such miraculous regeneration before, after all.

Sasuke’s hand is littered with heat burns and his throat bruised. Ino wakes up by herself, bandaged up by her teammates, with a splitting migraine, and the unconscious Shino is carefully laid at the center of the group to recuperate.

By the end of it all, Sakura turns and finds Naruto inexplicably close to the tied-up Suna nin. He is staring at his unconscious fellow jinchuuriki with an expression as if he has countless things to say and, for once, no words with which to say them. To Sakura, the space of silence that goes unnoticed among the other teens is more tellingly poignant than any words she could possibly overhear. There is a camaraderie there, a kind of empathetic commiseration that makes her turn her eyes away, feeling as if she has looked on something private.

The rapidly approaching veiled chakra signatures make her alert, but the twinge in the ink on her arm lets her relax again. She is, perhaps, the only person not surprised when the team of ANBU touches down in the clearing.

“We’ll take the jinchuuriki,” one of them, female, says to the group as a whole. Sakura sees Kiba sag, as if in relief that there is no longer any chance of contention.

There is a pause, and then Naruto says quietly but firmly, “His name is Gaara.” Several of the masked faces visibly shift to consider him, and after moment’s consideration, he adds with all the authority of a boy who from childhood has known masked soldiers, “And I want to talk to him before you take him.”

The heads swivel around as if seeking direction, and after a beat, the one that stands closest to them says, “Quickly.”

A different ANBU walks over to Gaara and injects a bolt of medical chakra—crude, Sakura notes, but effective in waking the boy up. Her attention diverts from Naruto’s quiet speaking toward what looks to be the leader of the team.

Familiar, she thinks, and then she knows. Flashes of black fire, strands of silver hair falling to the floor—the monster under her bed with the scroll that she received her twelfth birthday and every awkward but precious pat of encouragement when nobody believed in her—

The ANBU with whom she killed her mentor walks toward them. Sasuke, she notes with not-quite-idle curiosity, is turning red beside her. Her own pulse is raging against her skin.

And the voice that echoes out from behind the mask carries, perhaps, just the slightest tinge of approval: “Work to double the sprints. You are still too slow.”

“What?” Sasuke asks, his brows puckered, but Sakura knows immediately that the statement was directed at her. Knows not just because of the words, but because of the two Uchiha policeman in the street that sunny day in the restaurant with Hana, the black _fire_ burning at the edges of the cut, the spinning pinwheel eyes behind the mask. Knows because his attention and his very chakra is directed at her. She jerks her head down in a quick but respectful nod that nearly escapes all the Genin’s attention, but for Sasuke, who turns to her and repeats, voice rising in both pitch and incredulity, “What?”

And while the ANBU team carries a docile Gaara off, while Sasuke grabs her shoulder to turn her attention to him, Sakura connects a couple of horrifying dots to a name familiar to all shinobi and all bingo books.

Uchiha Itachi of the Sharingan, the heir and pinnacle of the Uchiha clan, Konoha’s Bloodless Three Thousand Crows.

* * *

_“Taken down by a bunch of children?” The voice breaks off into a snarl. “That useless fool.” Silence reigns for a pause, and then, “No matter. We will proceed without him. Yes, that is the best way.”_

* * *

The end, when it comes, is anticlimactic. One gong rings, and Sakura sees more than half the group tense or startle at the sound. Not a minute goes by before another flash lights up the sky; after a couple more minutes, two more booms come in quick succession. She meets Shikamaru’s grave eyes from across the clearing; they’ve come to the same conclusion. Groups thrown out of the arena always come all at once; these are dead, and gone down with a fight.

It has been one day since the attack, and though everybody is conscious and functioning now, there is a wariness among them that did not exist before. Their group is gathered closer; their movements are smoother and sharper. Nobody suggests splitting the group again to whittle down the numbers in the arena. The game is no longer a fun game, the forest no longer a backyard playground in which they are heirs and heiresses, kings and queens. They gather, grim and watchful eyes far older than just days ago.

Death became real to them that day.

She looks over to where Naruto sits, unnaturally still, in his vigil over the camp perimeter. Earlier, she had spoken to him as privately as she could in the newly cautious and wary atmosphere.

He’d said, “The only real demons in this world are people, Sakura.”

He’d said, “I believe he can be more than what he thinks he has to be.”

“Shit,” he says now, rising from his crouch on the branch, “That is a really large bomb.” They all look up to the sky as the shadow sweeps over them, to the paper-white winged clay creation above.

“He’s not going to blow it,” Sasuke reasons, “He’s standing on it.”

“What if it’s a trick,” Choji mutters, hunching forward, shoulders stiff. His hands are shaking.

They all flinch at the lightworks that erupt in the sky, though all it turns out to be are some small firecracker bombs set off close to the large bird that Deidara is standing on. His laughter echoes over the distance.

“Alright, kiddos,” He yells, chakra projection carrying his voice clear to where they are, “It’s done, yeah. Get back to the tents.”

* * *

They come out of the forest in waves, some of them still the children that walked into the trees, and some of them no longer quite as young as before. Among the white tents, Tsunade scribbles on a sheet of paper and hands it to the dark-haired medic standing beside her. It is an IOU.

They do not yet know what is coming.

* * *

The twelve ‘finalists’ that gather are a ragged group. Three of those final twelve places are taken up by their team, now a well-oiled machine of nine tried and found true by fire. Six other very young Konoha genin who seem to have made their own large team take up another two places. Two genin from Iwa, with one member of their team conspicuously absent, take another place. Four are gathered from Sound, though not together; one team of three and one lone genin. Two genin from Kumo, each from a different team, claim two more spots, and the remaining two are lone genin from Kiri and from Kusa.

There is a celebratory tone in the air, but for their group of nine, which remains quietly watchful and wary. None of the other genin have come into contact with a rampaging Tailed Beast, after all.

The girl wearing the Kiri headband looks at them, sneers, and spits on the ground. “Weaklings that can’t survive by themselves,” she taunts.

“Just smarter than you,” a Hyuuga girl from the other Konoha group parries, “Which isn’t saying much.”

As the tension reaches a boiling point, Sasori’s soundless but emphatic appearance silences the crowd. His eyes flick over them slowly and disinterestedly, as his tail makes an abrupt gesture to the right.

“Draw your numbers,” he says.

Though they all proceed obediently, one of the Kumo genin asks in a defiant but meek tone, “What is this for?”

In response, Sasori’s tail flicks up, pointing toward them, glinting with the sheen of poison. “Some of you are all brawns and no brain,” he hisses in remark. Then, “For the exhibition matches in two weeks. The Exams need winners.”

The plurality of the last word is not lost on anybody.

As the ‘random’ match pairings are announced, Sakura notes with amusement that none of the opponents are from the same village. Team 7 is facing the lone genin from Sound; many of the other Konoha teams are also up against single participants.

“This won’t be much of an exhibition,” Sasuke says. Some of the surrounding genin are turning to stare at him, and Sakura knows without looking that his smile is sharpness and a purely predatory knife edge, honed by hours of continuous tension. “It’ll be over in two rounds, since there will only be Konoha nin left.”

But in reality, the exhibition matches never even start.

* * *

In the sixteenth year of Namikaze Minato’s Hokageship, prior to the third stage of the International Chuunin Exams, Konoha shuts down its borders and declares all foreign nationals within its walls to be temporary detainees. Prisoners of war.

Minutes after the release of this news and the ANBU-enforced apprehension of said detainees, who are mostly genin teams and their associated jonin, rumors spring up among the populace concerning the warmongering actions of other nations. Iwa’s unnatural presence in this Exam is noted, and the Kumo contingent’s belligerent activities are spoken of. The rate of death in this year’s Exams, higher than ever before, is cited often. And, most compelling of all, eight of the major clans have released news of a Tailed Beast attack directed at Konoha’s own clan children during the Exam.

Those in the know recognize it as a masterfully executed maneuver as Konoha’s citizens begin to pick up arms. It’s a grassroots movement to blow the bellows of war. Those in the know also know that the truth, and its relevance, is written by the victors.

There is a violence present in the potential of the day; there is ozone in the air that was not there previously. There is war, hovering, red like fresh-spilled blood yet to come on the horizon.

* * *

At dawn on the day before the Declaration, Sakura arrives in the reception area outside the Hokage’s office. There are many shinobi passing through, and she is flagged down by one of several black-clad nin.

“Sakura Haruno, 7:06am” he verifies, and she nods and accepts the mission scroll from him.

At home, she unrolls it and reads it. A simple two lines above the Hokage’s seal: _Your mission is complete._ And, _Report to 119 Blaze Road at 0600 tomorrow for next assignment._

With a shadow of excitement, and an echo of remembered pain from the ink on her arm, she recognizes the address.

* * *

The day before the Declaration, Sakura spends her morning like any other. Sasuke and Naruto are set on practicing combinations for the matches despite Kakashi’s extremely casual attitude. During lunchtime, Kakashi snags the last portion of the fried rice Sakura has brought.

When Naruto complains loudly, he curves his visible eye in a smile and says, “Well, I could hardly pass up what might be my last Sakura-made meal, could I?” Sasuke and Naruto act offended by what they assume to be rather macabre humor, but Sakura knows what Kakashi is really saying.

“I’ve received notice of another assignment,” she says. It is half an admission of something they have long suspected, and yet Naruto and Sasuke turn astonished eyes on her. Suddenly her mouth is desert dry, her heart running heavily. “I,” she starts, and then finds no words with which to continue.

In the warmth of the summer sun, smelling not antimicrobial cleaning solution but fried rice and fresh grass and wind, Sakura has perhaps never been more lost and yet at home. She knows, then, that these three people are to her what nobody else is. Once, she watched people like them from the mission counter and thought that they were of different worlds. They shone with the glint of history’s favor and birth-gifted advantages. They were the ones who would live to be legends, heroes in battle tales, records in bingo books with capitalized nicknames, unlike little medic girls working in the white operating rooms and stealing lives in the sly night. She once compared herself to legends like Copycat Kakashi and only knew herself to be fragile. They were the heroes of legend, and she was part of the unnamed expendable masses.

Instead, it turned out that they are as much flesh and blood and darkness as she. Or perhaps, rather, _she_ is made of the same light as they.

“Even when I’m not around as often,” she says, finally, “I hope you’ll still consider me part of this family.”

* * *

Under the quiet lights of early evening, the city is brimming with an uncontainable energy that is half-fear and half-excitement. War is coming, Konoha knows, and she believes herself to be ready and capable of it.

The target of war is yet unclear, but the word among the populace is that Sound, Iwa, and Suna have formed a three-way alliance against Konoha. The Kiri shinobi, who are still free to roam the streets, generally agree that their Kage is either currently or will be soon participating in talks with Konoha. The Kumo shinobi, who are much more heavily watched, are generally spitting in rage and hatred against anybody and everybody, including other Kumo shinobi.

Sakura watches two of them snarl at each other like cats in the rain for a couple minutes, unwilling to admit to herself that she is delaying her decision. She is standing in front of the restaurant, under gauzy yellowed lights, where Sasuke and Naruto have planned to eat. They are probably somewhere within its walls.

She has not missed a single Friday night dinner, but she is no longer so sure it is her place.

The hand that lands on her shoulder is warm and startling; she is so lost in her thoughts that Sasuke manages to sneak up on her. She feels his amusement at even her aborted startled movement. He’s proud of shocking her, the git.

They are both standing behind her, and she turns around to face them and the heavy silence. But Naruto smiles, and it breaks across his face brighter than the restaurant lights. In that moment they are just friends meeting by chance, two fifteen year old adults and one sixteen year old killer, wreathed in the aroma of good food and pleasant company.

“Well?” He says, “Are we going to stand here all night or are we going to go in? I’m hungry.”

Sitting around nearly empty dinner plates that night, Sasuke tells her, “Drop by the team trainings whenever you have time.”

“Yeah, don’t slack off,” Naruto adds with a chortle. “And if you ever don’t show up on a Friday dinner without a warning you’d better be dead. And you’d better be coming to my Team 7 birthday lunch Sunday.”

Sakura turns their words over again and again in her head. They’re not sweet statements, but they’re amazing to her. It took Kabuto one year and three months to begin to introduce her as his student. It has taken these boys— _her_ boys—a little under two months to accept her into their team.

Sakura knows a lot of things that she is not, anymore. She is no longer daughter, nor student, nor niece, nor protégé. Each one is a loss, an unforgotten wound that would perhaps never fully close.

But she also _is_ ; she is shinobi, and friend, and now, team member. She is a part of Team 7.

It means more to her than she had wanted to admit.

* * *

Morning.

Sakura gives herself a full hour after her morning practice rituals to prepare herself for the assignment meeting. She cools down after the last of the routines, the sprints up the Hokage mountain, and stretches. She takes a nice, long shower and opens a new bar of scentless soap. She has an omelet complete with veggies for breakfast.

But perhaps nothing could have prepared her to arrive at the doors and be greeted by an all too familiar smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lanxing: (蓝星) lit. “blue star,” Romanized from Chinese, my language of choice. I will stick to canon when I can, and will give anything new a Chinese name.  
> Zangbao: (脏爆) characters involved in the words for “organ” and “explosion”
> 
> Original AN (2017):  
> To my patient, wonderful, and dear reader:   
> My very sincere thanks to the friends who have left reviews and PMs. I have read through every single one so many times—each word you leave is indescribably precious to me. It is because of these notes that I continued to write; because of the readers that I feel I have come to know through the words you leave.   
> I’ll be very honest with you, because though honesty is vulnerability, such is the way that steel is forged ;) It was very difficult for me to write and post this chapter. Because of unavoidable events this year, I have not put metaphorical pen to paper for months on end. As a result, I am insecure and afraid of not achieving the standards I want for this story. More than that, I am afraid of disappointing you.   
> -L


	6. Aegis of Konoha

Hana is outside the doors, pacing, before the sun rises.

“It was the right decision,” Hai assures her, as Ma and Ru rub against her legs comfortingly. “Sakura will be great in ANBU.”

“If she survives it,” Hana snaps. “I didn’t know there was a war about to break out when I put her name in for nomination.” There is no response from the Haimaru triplets. They, she thinks with a sinking heart, also know that she may have called her best friend not just to opportunity and growth, but to danger.

But when she sees Sakura walking towards her, she can’t help the smile that blooms across her face. Her best friend seems taller than just weeks ago, carrying herself with a trace of something that wasn’t there before. Not confidence—though Hana knows Sakura is not entirely constructed of steel backbone, her friend has always exuded a certain self-possession—it is more like assuredness, more like a kind of security. Though Hana knows in her bones and blood that she and Sakura are _pack_ , she feels a pang of something resembling jealousy that Sakura, who has long been a solitary sail on the horizon, has finally found her safe harbor.

“Hana!” Sakura sounds shocked, her voice containing the trace of a laugh. “What are you doing here? Are you back from your mission already?”

“All of us were called back starting about a week ago,” Hana says, wrapping her arms around Sakura, who leans in easily to the hug. “Hokage-sama has been preparing for this war.”

She thinks of Namikaze Minato standing on the dais yesterday, voice calm and confident and carrying through a crowd the likes of which she’d never seen before. The wall cold under her hand, bound to her by gravity-defying chakra. Their Hokage, their flee-on-sight Yellow Flash, the Sun of Konoha, telling his people, _our fire will not burn out_ , and the crowd’s assent coming steady low and roaring like the beats of a war drum.

She shivers, and smacks Sakura when she feels the telltale warmth of green chakra flowing along her nerves. “Prat! I’m the one who’s supposed to be comforting you.” It is only then that she remembers and pulls away from her friend. Sakura had looked so normal—better than usual, even—walking in that she’d forgotten.

But Sakura is unreadable, and so she has no choice but to pry carefully, “And how _are_ you feeling? It’s pretty nasty, what they like to load the door of entry with.” She leaves out that she knows Chameleon had done some digging in the archives to prepare something particularly nasty for Sakura. Skilled though she may be, the illusionist harbors grudges over even imaginary slights, such as Sigma Captain giving a girl training tips. Hana knows that part of her extreme disapproval for Chameleon’s _efforts_ arises from the sliver of guilt she feels for her hand in it. Though anybody with half a brain can tell that Uchiha Itachi was only borrowing a shield to shelter his brother, Chameleon is not the only girl too far gone in her teenage romance fantasies to see the obvious.

“Yeah,” Sakura says, “What was that supposed to be?”

“It’s a fear illusion technique,” Hana says, “This one interacts with a seal the Hokage himself sunk into the entryway. Instead of inserting images into your head, it supposedly draws on natural chakra to make realistic chakra constructs, which are harder to recognize and disperse. The downside is that the illusionist has to know enough about the person to direct the illusion initially, though afterward it draws on your own expectations. I believe,” she adds, determinedly _not thinking_ of when she went through the door herself, “that they usually go for _realization of inner demons_ or something like that.”

“Inner demons,” Sakura repeats thoughtfully. “Well, I’m sorry to say they guessed mine wrong.”

Hana is startled into a bark of laughter. “Oh Sage, don’t let Chameleon hear you say that. She was terribly proud of this one.”

Sakura’s mouth lifts into a sly smile that Hana knows better to question, and she shifts the topic away. “What are you doing here then? Carrot and stick? Or are you giving me this mysterious next mission?”

“Carrot, I think,” Hana admits. “That and I’m one of your sponsors for operative.” Slightly startled green eyes turn up to her before narrowing in a smile, and Hana turns away with a grimace. “Shit, you’re not supposed to know that yet. Keep it hush. I didn’t say anything. Let’s move on, why don’t we?”

“I think I should take it from here,” a voice says from the doorway, “Before you give away what few surprises are supposed to remain.”

Hana turns to face the door to see Sakura’s secondary sponsor and finds herself not entirely surprised to find an ANBU legend standing there: Hatake Kakashi of the Sharingan, the Yondaime’s surviving student, and recently reinstated Theta Captain.

* * *

“Ah, it’s been so long since I’ve done this that I don’t know what I need to tell you anymore,” Kakashi says.

Sakura rolls her eyes in his general direction. “Then why’d you butt in?”

“Insubordination,” he says cheerfully. “Cursing at your superior! That’ll get you a demerit, I think.”

They walk into a brightly lit hallway lined with long seal-reinforced windows overlooking vast training rooms. Despite being indoors, they are as bright as daylight, and from what Sakura can determine with her rudimentary seal knowledge and a brief glance, the lighting seals etched into the ceilings are lightning-based and not the common fire-based seals. The terrains of the larger rooms seem to vary, and pairs or groups of shinobi spar viciously in them; some smaller rooms are simpler concrete blocks and contain only one shinobi each.

“About eight years ago, ANBU absorbed a division of special forces once known as Root,” Kakashi says quietly, drawing her attention away from a fast-paced spar to their right. “This building used to be one of their facilities.”

“Root,” Sakura repeats, her brows furrowing in question.

“You won’t have heard of them,” he says, turning away from her. “But you’ll get to know some of them soon, I’m sure. They’re very… distinctive, even though they’ve all gone through reintegration training.”

They pass by a trio of people gathered around one window, observing the session below. Sakura sees one spot Kakashi, and the strange expression that crosses the man’s face. It’s excitement, perhaps, or maybe close to _hunger_ , and he starts toward them. At her side, Kakashi holds up a hand. The man doesn’t approach them. They keep walking through the door at the other end of the hallway, up the stairs, and into a large cafeteria with vaulted ceilings and full wall windows overlooking Blaze road.

There are not many people around in the lull of the morning hours. They sit near the view, in surprisingly comfortable hard metal chairs.

“ANBU, for the most part,” Kakashi says, “is kind of like a special club of the shinobi forces that acts very similar to the normal corps but work only for the village or the daimyo. Most ANBU operatives don’t have set teams, but many people prefer to take work with known comrades. You look after yourself, and you find groups to work with, and you update your information with the registry to help other people find you when they need you. You’re paid by mission, and there is a lower limit number of missions you have to take. There’s a terribly long and detailed rulebook, and,” his eye crinkles, “you’ll probably read all of it.”

“But don’t make the mistake of thinking ANBU is the same as the regular corps. There are no secrets in ANBU. You are expected to be able to do what you do well against any kind of opponent, which you do by training against every type of opponent. You are expected to learn what you can from any other ANBU. To be an ANBU operative is to stow away the self. That’s why mission groups are fluid, and training partners even more so.”

Sakura nods slowly. “That’s interesting,” she says. “I was always under the impression that there were ANBU teams.”

“There are,” Kakashi says. “But they are not typical. The exact numbers are only known to the Hokage and the Commander, Beta Captain, but I’d ballpark ANBU at nearly 700 members, with about 300 operatives. There are only twelve defined ANBU teams. Now,” he draws out a white mask and gestures to a small theta symbol on the inside cheek, “about to become 13.”

“You’re the captain,” Sakura infers. “It seems like an honor. Congratulations.”

“ANBU teams are different. It is considered an honor and those on teams are valued as elites. What most people don’t understand,” he leans forward, emphasis in the line of his body, “is that the value of a team is not in each individual, but in the team as a whole. The teams are strong because they are teams. They are permanent because they are, in the truest sense, _teams_.”

He is fingering the mask on the table, his eye sliding across her face, observing. Sakura swallows. She thinks she knows where this is going. Kakashi is building a new ANBU team, and she thinks—

He leans back with a nearly silent sigh. “To be honest, Sakura,” he says, “you’re not ready to be on an ANBU team.”

—there’s a hole in her throat, some kind of heavy disappointment sinking like an illness in her stomach. She’d thought, she’d _thought_ that Kakashi had finally _approved_ of her—

“Yet,” he adds, into that space. “And I like you, Sakura. I want you on Theta Team. I’ll give you six months, Sakura. Fight your way into Theta.”

A part of her feels lost, unwilling, rebellious. She’s been fighting all her life, and why aren’t things ever just _easy_? But another part of her is gearing up for the challenge, driven, _hungry_ , and that’s the part that looks up out of her eyes into Kakashi’s expression.

“I know you can,” he adds quietly, and the snarling, angry, tired Sakura subsides. _Six months_ , she thinks, and her lips smile.

She will.

* * *

There is something about approaching a group of shinobi already training together that is intimidating, like trying to belatedly integrate into an established friend group. It has been a long time since Sakura has considered herself shy, but that is beyond her comfort.

Each training room has a maximum number of people, but Sakura tries not to slide into any groups with slots still open. Instead, she arrives in the slow pre-dawn hours after her ablutions (the ever-increasing mountain sprints and stretches, a quick breakfast, and half an hour of chakra meditation) to one of the three centers she has access to and enters one of the two-person rooms.

Sometimes she trains alone. Usually somebody joins her, because an open slot in a two-person room is like an open invitation Sometimes they break for lunch together, or meet again, or even decide and schedule to meet again.

Friday nights are still sacred, and Hana, when she is back in town from her ever-increasing reconnaissance missions, is always a priority. But Sakura slowly finds the names she knows increasing and the meals she has alone decreasing. She collects the names and the faces and the lunchtime conversations. The shadows under her bed no longer reach for her, calling her name, or if they do, she is too tired to notice when she returns home and collapses for the night.

They say that time is the great healer, but on those rare occasions that her mind wanders back to those dark places, Sakura thinks that it is not. Distance numbs the pain, and distance sutures the wounds. And no matter how much time passes, you won’t get away from the burdens that you won’t let go of.

Time has passed, and she could yet have remained in the same shadowed place, but she has not. She has walked forward.

And maybe, in the process of reaching out with both hands and all that she is for these new goals and new people and new warmth, Sakura has finally learned to loosen her grip on the shackles she was holding on to.

Most days, she hardly ever thinks of them, collapsing like puppets with strings cut, her chakra the knife. Most days, she hardly ever remembers how much it hurt, how much she loved them for even pretending to look at her. They may be there in the foundations of her history, there in the recesses of her mind, there in the thrum of her life blood, but most days, her head is full of other people, other conversations, with getting faster and stronger and better. Her muscles are imprinted with a hundred new and different ways to cut, ways that were not borne of the blood of her blood.

Some things seem very far away from her now.

She thinks that she could get used to that.

* * *

Healing makes for an abundance of paperwork.

Documentation is the fuel of a well-working system—documentation of the history, of the physical, of the differential diagnoses, of the treatment options and plan. Traumatic injuries tend to be uncomplicated, but documentation is a protection against negligence and misunderstanding. _Look_ , it says, _I have done my best with what I have_. On a team, it would perhaps matter less, but it is necessary for the scattered work Sakura does for the training grounds and for the incoming missions teams.

And, well, documentation is the root of billing. Sakura has to pay her rent, regardless of how little time she spends in her rooms.

Of the many spaces in the ANBU complex where paperwork may be done, Sakura prefers the meditative spaces most: the rock garden, the inner courtyard with the bubbling pond, the floor pillow room—and the tea lounge. The tea lounge is her favorite. It paints a picture of a different life, of different possibilities.

There is also usually company; quiet, well-mannered company that brews tea with far more finesse and skill than Sakura has been taught in the past. In the time since she has started to consider herself and her identity as that which is wrapped up in _teams_ , Sakura has come to appreciate the value of good company.

And Sigma Captain, in the tea lounge at least, is very good company.

(Outside of the tea lounge, he is more _leadership_ and _pressure_ than company, perhaps. But against wood walls, in air filled with the fragrance of Pu’erh and the rustle of paper, he is just _comrade._ )

They don’t talk. Sakura may spend an inadvisable amount of time watching Sigma Captain brew and taste tea, learning so she can make her own perfect Longjing brew and have her own little paperwork tea ceremony, and Sigma Captain might angle in a way that allows her to see the motions, but they don’t speak. And Sakura may entirely inadvisably wonder why Sigma Captain is here and not in the compound with his family, until one day she finds out.

He rolls up his scrolls, walks over to the wall chute and deposits them, sending them off to the archives, where they would be harvested by Yamanaka filers for disseminated storage in the Smokecloud servers. The paper information, along with supporting memory imprints and other documentation, would be passed into the complex organizing system and uploaded to the Akimichi-powered, Nara-connected network, where relevant parties could access it from all across the Konoha system.

He closes the chute and seals it. He gathers the ceramics and washes them. They make eye contact; she nods, and he nods in return.

Then, maybe deliberately, he disperses.

Sakura’s first thought is: _can shadow clones even drink?_ And her second thought is: _oh, that’s terribly clever and_ obvious.

And the next it is not she but a two percent chakra shadow clone that spends a few afternoon hours writing paperwork. But sometimes it is a seventy percent chakra clone that goes out to practice, and it is still Sakura who goes to sit in the wooden tea lounge, to bask in the aroma and the calm and the sometimes company.

* * *

The shinobi nations rose alongside the shogunates from the Warring States era, and naturally followed the map of the civilian territories. After all, no government wanted to use secret forces from a different and potentially hostile land. However, in the relatively peaceful times that followed, shinobi and civilian regimes followed different trajectories. When Iwa swallowed two satellite territories, Amegakure remained and Iwagakure took no action. After Wave broke off from Fire, the Land never managed to develop its own shinobi nation or Hidden Village.

Despite the shockwaves following Konoha’s announcement, the bureaucracy and diplomacy that follows is slow. The hostages are all kept safe, sheltered, fed. The politicians stream across the lands followed by bristling guards to sit around full tables of lavish food and play devastating word games. It’s easy; they all want the same thing. The lands all sign agreements to have no part in the Shinobi Nations’ affairs. The daimyos wash their hands and dust their feet.

Iwagakure and Sunagakure, two long enemies, shake hands over a common enemy. Kumogakure, hoping to be a vulture picking on the spoils, signs a strained peace treaty with Konoha and retrieves its genin. Nobody expects the treaty to last; it is just kindling for the spark that will start a blaze.

Mist, of all places, bloody Kirigakure, bares its pointed teeth and declares its intention to ally with Konoha in this fight.

In his office, under the warm and cheerful afternoon sun, overlooking a nation ready and even eager for war, the Yondaime Hokage traces an old photo of Team 7. _His_ Team 7.

And he thinks about the enemy, and he thinks about Kushina. And maybe, basking in that sun and gazing out at the cloudless blue sky and at the dream once sought after, maybe he sheds tears. But nobody is around to see his moment of weakness, of humanity, and indeed if there was anybody around to see, the moment may have never come. 

Some things, though wished for, can no longer be.

* * *

Sakura is not the only one to ambush the dinner that night, but Ino has come for her and not Team 7. As she approaches the hole-in-wall noodle shop, the weight of Ino’s gaze diverts her to the bench where the blonde lounges.

“Sakura,” Ino says in greeting, as if they’d chanced upon each other here. “It’s been too long!”

“Hi, Ino,” Sakura says. Feeling the need to add to the lackluster greeting, she says, “I’m just here for our weekly team dinner.”

Ino laughs. “They still haven’t figured out how you find them every time.”

Sakura hesitates, a bit, on the many excuses she could use. But the dusk is softly settling, Ino’s regard is warm, and something terribly beautiful has been rooting, unfurling in her. Kabuto had always kept his secrets close. They were to be caged, and confined and casketed, lowered into the ground and kept from the light, so that they would not be stolen and cast against him. The ANBU buried their secrets too, but to water and grow and support and share. They were kept from light only in infancy, in protection, and they fed on light as they came into their own.

And Sakura, like a secret, was buried but is now, maybe, finally blooming.

“If you know what you’re looking for,” she says, “Naruto’s chakra is like a beacon. He just about never suppresses it, especially while eating, and it’s quite substantial.”

Ino looks at her, a bit sharp, and smiles brilliantly. Every shinobi worth her salt knows a bit about chakra sensing, but developing sensitivity and specificity in targeted sensing is a labor of talent. Sifting through signal and noise is difficult at best, and becomes more of a headache with large areas. And finding one person’s chakra in a place like Konoha—is very valuable indeed.

“I guess there are only so many restaurant districts to look through anyway,” Ino says, neatly blocking her from any further elaboration on her sensing range. “All these boys know to do is eat. If you’ve got some time off training, I know some great supplies shops we could browse. And you still owe me a chakra wavelength syncing lesson.”

It is, Sakura, thinks, maybe an offer of friendship. Friendship outside the forest with the gongs. Friendship with a girl who gardens secrets. She has relaxed more around these kinds of overtures after months of casual sparring and lunches in the training compounds.

So she offers Ino an easy smile, cutting loose the suspicion and the hesitation and the questioning. Ablating the fear, the unknowing, the certainty that each step teetered at the edge of a precipice of misplaced trust. Because though she spent only a few months on Team 7, they have somehow become team. Despite any cerebral protests, Sakura knows with her gut they are pack like she and Hana, that their mutual trust is true.

And isn’t it strange? She sat next to the same two students in the medical training program for months before Hana decided they would be friends, and she doesn’t remember their names. She bunked with the same girl for a week in the orphanage and they were friendly, but they never talked again after she moved out. She’d worked in the same lab as Kabuto for years, alongside him, under his hand, but now he is a shadow under her nightmare bed.

Some people were passing visitors in life, some people were lessons, and some people are somehow here to stay.

They decide on next Friday afternoon, and Ino stalks off with the air of a woman who knows what she wants and has gotten what she wanted. Sakura orders at the table and slides into the empty booth space by Sasuke.

(It feels a bit like sliding home.)

The question comes out of left field midway through dinner. “Sakura, where do you live?” Sakura tilts the bowl a little further, fills her mouth with a bit more soup than typical, and the pause doesn’t last. Pauses don’t typically last with Naruto. “It’s obvious where Sasuke and I live, and we’ve been trying to figure out where Kakashi lives for _years_.”

It is probably not a good time to tell Naruto that she had been to Kakashi’s apartment, and that it is just two floors below the Hokage’s own residence.

“I’m about a block from the East River district farmer’s market,” she says.

Two uncomprehending expressions face her. “Farmer’s market,” Sasuke echoes, as if he’s chewing on a new vocabulary word. Of course, the boys don’t grocery shop. And if they did, Sasuke probably bought his tomatoes in air-conditioned stores and not shabby street side stalls.

“Oh, honestly,” she sighs. “By the East Trade Academy?” This, too, doesn’t seem to ring a bell. “It’s somewhere between Mama’s BBQ and the Cake Bake Shop.”

Comprehension dawns. “We haven’t been to Mama’s in a while!” Naruto says. “Next week. And then you can invite us to your place Sakura!”

And so that next Friday, after an cloudless afternoon spent trawling the extensive bargain supplies market stalls with laughter and Ino, Sakura arrives at Mama’s BBQ with a new array of innovative tags stuffed in her pouch where her money used to be. And she goes from Mama’s BBQ to her house with a full belly and two visitors.

Sakura sees the apartment through eyes that don’t feel like her own. She had mopped the floors yesterday, and made up the bed and drawn open the blinds for once. It is a little studio, with a two sets of windows illuminating the rack of clothing partitioning her bed from the well-used kitchen. In the living room area: a low wooden table laden with library books, a stack of three dusty unused dark grey floor cushions, and the cushion she sat in this morning while reading _The Nature of Fuuinjutsu 4: Wind Chakra Elements_. She notices for the first time that she never changed the wall color, and that it is a light blue-grey.

It is, she realizes, a bit sparse. And all of the furniture is grey.

It is just a room where she sleeps.

Naruto looks around and bites his lip. His brows furrow and his eyes squint. “I am going to assume that you’re biting back an offer to paint my walls orange, Naruto,” she says, voice not wavering, “and I thank you for that.”

He doesn’t respond or meet her gaze, but that pinched expression slides away.

“Sakura,” Sasuke declares when they are seated with tea around the table, “I am going to get you a houseplant. A pothos, maybe. Those are somewhat indestructible.”

“You mean you’re going to gift her a baby plant because your brother has turned your house into a plant nursery,” Naruto says. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Sakura buries the fact that Uchiha Itachi propagates pothos. It seems the kind of secret thing one ought to know to humanize one’s heroes.

“I,” Sasuke says with great dignity, “believe that Sakura’s room needs more life and color.” And Naruto has nothing to say to that, because even Sakura knows that is true.

“Well, I’m going to get her a better gift to come home to,” Naruto says, and Sakura smiles because everything, even sweetness, is a competition with these two boys.

And it is a nice thought. To have something to come home to—to have a home to return to. _Though in some ways_ , Sakura thinks, looking at the boys bickering in her grey walls, thinking of Hana wreaking havoc in the kitchen the day after a mission, of Ino’s maneuvers toward a coming sleepover, _that is a gift already received in full_.

* * *

The Hokage tends to stay late at the office Friday nights. So when Namikaze Minato opens his front door, Naruto is already curled on the couch with a book.

“I’m home,” he says.

“Welcome home.”

Naruto sets down his book as his father sheds the robe and shoes. There is a bit of hesitation in him, and it is not a feeling he is used to. But for all his paucity of skill in acting, none of that hesitation shows as he walks toward his father.

He thinks of a still grey room colored only by a cut of old pink and a new thread of green. He thinks of what it would be like, to live in the quiet, with nothing but him and his demon and his dream. He wraps his arms around that familiar distant figure, and it is like coming out of a fog and seeing home for the first time in a long time; the arms that rise around him come without hesitation, and this is to him _belonging_ embodied.

“Welcome home,” he says again, “Dad.”

Namikaze Minato breathes in deep, but whatever words might’ve come sink instead to the bottoms of his lungs. He rubs slow circles into his son’s back and closes too-bright eyes.

For his light, for Naruto, Konoha would never fall. He would make sure of it. 

* * *

Sakura rests the pothos on the windowsill by her bed, where it may watch over her and the shadows. And she plants the Team 7 photo next to it, gently, because even unbreakable things must be handled with care.

* * *

“So I guess I’ll be calling you captain again from now on, eh.”

Kakashi doesn’t look up as Genma half-falls gracelessly into the seat cushion beside him. The older man slides his mask off and hangs it on his hip holster, sliding a senbon between his lips.They look out through the glass at the training enclosures.

“Would have been easier if you hadn’t joined Epsilon,” Kakashi sighs eventually into the comfortable silence of old camaraderie. “Old Boar wanted to go five rounds before she agreed to sign the paperwork.”

“She just doesn’t like paperwork,” Genma says.

They sit for a moment, watching flashes of steel and chakra. Genma clicks his tongue at a good block and grimaces as blades catch on bone.

“So,” he says, tone casual as though this is not the motive of this conversation, but Kakashi looks over sharply at him anyway. “This month I found myself a new sparring buddy. You might have heard of her.”

“Have you really,” Kakashi says dryly.

“Someone very capable has helped her become very fast,” Genma says. “You don’t get that fast without a bit of guidance.” And a lot of resolve, he doesn’t say, because both of them are all too familiar with the kind of heart that holds that much resolve. If you persist long enough, something will surely give—your resolve, or your limits. But it is a particular kind of life that nurtures and holds so much resolve and so many shattered limits.

“How interesting,” Kakashi offers when it becomes clear Genma would like a response.

“Her angles of attack and use of medical jutsu would make me as wary of the hospital as you are if I weren’t convinced most medics can’t do what she does,” Genma says. Somewhere in there is probably a bit of accusation regarding Kakashi’s general attitude towards his own health.

“Don’t be convinced.”

“There’s a look about her,” Genma says. “A hunger.” A bit of a desire to prove oneself, a bit of a chip on the shoulder, a bit of a soft sharpness in steel spine bending to the weight of the world. Genma has seen eyes like those before. (Maybe, even, in the mirror.) Sparring had felt like playing with a wild but cold-blooded creature, but lunch break had been a well-mannered, soft-spoken, curious girl. He had sought her out again a few days later for reasons that did not bear Kakashi’s name, reasons all his own.

“I gave her six months,” Kakashi finally responds to the unspoken question. “There are, oh, two left.”

“You and your tests.” Genma shakes his head and and looks somewhere other than at Kakashi. “You don’t have to test everyone, Kakashi. Some people will drive themselves to the limits of an early grave even without any pushing.”

“The best weapon we have is preparation,” Kakashi says, and they sit on that for another moment.

Genma doesn’t tell Kakashi that he has spent some time wondering about Kakashi’s motivations—is the intended audience the girl herself, or Kakashi, or Theta, or ANBU? Genma doesn’t tell Kakashi that he has long since proved himself, that many trust his judgment, that he has long passed the need for atonement and proof and living so cautiously. Genma doesn’t tell Kakashi that everybody knows Kakashi has taken wrong steps and made irrevocable mistakes, but everybody has also watched him walk many good steps, even many very difficult right steps that would cause many others to stumble.

“For what it’s worth,” Genma says instead, “I welcome Sakura to the team. Full seal of approval.” He stands, slides the senbon back into his holster. “Have a bit more faith in yourself and your people, Hatake.” He watches Kakashi look at somewhere other than him and adds, “I trust you.”

* * *

Chakra-infused ink smells of promise and life. In that windowless room, the masked woman presses chakra into her shoulder. “Congratulations, operative,” she says. There is no superiority, no smirk in her voice to be found now. “Would it be that your fire never burns out.”

In the door beyond, a room Sakura has not entered before, the masked woman walks to a wall of chakra seal-laden porcelain and draws out a mask.

“Magpie,” the woman says. Sakura takes the mask and fits it over her eyes, feeling the seals slide into place, watching some of them activate across her vision. Her fingers linger on the paint markings, on the meaning. It feels right, and Magpie smiles invisibly out.

And in her room, that night, Sakura examines the reflection in the new large mirror propped against her wall. It shows her the plant in moonlight unfurling a new leaf; the three new picture frames, strange and familiar and unforgettably loud on the sill; the symbol added to her shoulder, an oval with a line.

Theta.

* * *

The first skirmishes break out on the Iwa border, and that night Sakura visits Kakashi’s apartment as directed. She registers Naruto’s little sun-flare of chakra above them where he is probably dreaming of ramen, and the familiarity lends her calmness.

She thinks she knows she is going to meet her new team, Kakashi’s Theta team.

After mildly coddling Kakashi’s wrist sprain from his training of the day, she sets about making tea and examining his sparse decorations. He has more photos in his apartment than she does, she notes, and decides this must be rectified. His eye follows her balefully as she pokes at his frames and at the pothos on his nightstand, which is trailing down to his floor.

“I’m not very good at keeping things alive,” he says, “but Sensei gave it to me and so I have tried my best.”

“It’s growing well.” She smiles out his window, then. “You know, in some ways, Hokage-sama also entrusted me to you, Kakashi-sensei.”

They both turn then, at the incoming chakra signals. 

“Mm,” he agrees, and there are worlds in that sound. And he opens the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been years since I've written anything non-academic. Yet, in some ways, I think I have grown as a writer. 
> 
> The next chapter is in the works, but I am hesitant to make promises I can't keep. I'll try. 
> 
> I'm still not sure how the Archive works. If there's a way for you to let me know your thoughts, I'd love to hear them!


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